CARMILLA

Le Fanu

PROLOGUE

Upon a paper attached to the Narrative which follows, Doctor
Hesselius has written a rather elaborate note, which he
accompanies with a reference to his Essay on the strange
subject which the MS illuminates.

This mysterious subject he treats, in that Essay, with his
usual learning and acumen, and with remarkable directness
and condensation. It will form but one volume of the series of
that extraordinary man's collected papers.

As I publish the case, in these volumes, simply to interest
the 'laity', I shall forestall the intelligent lady, who relates it,
in nothing; and, after due consideration, I have determined,
therefore, to abstain from presenting any precis* of the learned
Doctor's reasoning, or extract from his statement on a subject
which he describes as 'involving, not improbably, some of the
[profoundest arcana of our dual existence, and its
intermediates'.*

I was anxious, on discovering this paper, to re-open the
correspondence commenced by Doctor Hesselius, so many
years before, with a person so clever and careful as his
informant seems to have been. Much to my regret, however, I
found that she had died in the interval.

She, probably, could have added little to the Narrative
which she communicates in the following pages, with, so far as
I can pronounce, such a conscientious particularity.

CHAPTER I

AN EARLY FRIGHT

In Styria,* we, though by no means magnificent people
inhabit a castle, or schloss. A small income, in that part of the
world, goes a great way. Eight or nine hundred a year does
wonders. Scantily enough ours would have answered among
wealthy people at home. My father is English, and I bear an
English name, although I never saw England. But here, in this
lonely and primitive place, where everything is so marvellously
cheap, I really don't see how ever so much more money would
at all materially add to our comforts, or even luxuries.

My father was in the Austrian service, and retired upon a
pension and his patrimony, and purchased this feudal resi-
dence, and the small estate on which it stands, a bargain.

Nothing can be more picturesque or solitary. It stands on a
slight eminence in a forest. The road, very old and narrow,
passes in front of its drawbridge, never raised in my time, and
its moat, stocked with perch, and sailed over I;y many swans,
and floating on its surface white fleets of water-lilies.

Over all this the schloss shows its many-windowed front; its
towers, and its Gothic chapel.

The forest opens in an irregular and very picturesque glade
before its gate, and at the right a steep Gothic bridge carries
the road over a stream that winds in deep shadow through the
wood.

I have said that this is a very lonely place. judge whether I
say truth. Looking from the hall door towards the road, the
forest in which our castle stands extends fifteen miles to the
right, and twelve to the left. The nearest inhabited villalye is
about seven of your English miles to the left. The nearest
inhabited schloss of any historic associations, is that of old
General Spielsdorf, nearly twenty miles away to the right.

I have said 'the nearest inhabited village', because there is,
only three miles westward, that is to say in the direction of
General Spielsdorf's schloss, a ruined village, with its quaint
little church, now roofless, in the aisle of which are the
mouldering tombs of the proud family of Karnstein, now
extinct, who once owned the equally desolate chateau which,
in the thick of the forest, overlooks the silent ruins of the town.

Respecting the cause of the desertion of this striking and
melancholy spot, there is a legend which I shall relate to you
another time.

I must tell you now, how very small is the party who
constitute the inhabitants of our castle. I don't include servants,
or those dependants who occupy rooms in the buildings
attached to the schloss. Listen, and wonder! My father, who is
the kindest man on earth, but growing old; and I, at the date
of my story, only nineteen. Eight years have passed since then.
I and my father constituted the family at the schloss. My
motlier, a Styrian lady, died in my infancy, but I had a good-
natured governess, who had been with me from, I might
almost say, my infancy. I could not remember the time when
her fat, benignant face was not a familiar picture in my
memory. This was Madame Perrodon, a native of Berne,
whose care and good nature in part supplied to me the loss of
my mother, whom I do not even remember, so early I lost her.
She made a third at our little dinner party. There was a fourth,
Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, a lady such as you term, I
believe, a 'finishing governess'. She spoke French and German,
Madame Perrodon French and broken English, to which my
father and I added English, which, partly to prevent its
becoming a lost language among us, and partly from patriotic
motives, we spoke every day. The consequence was a Babel,
at which strangers used to laugh , and which I shall make no
attempt to reproduce in this narrative. And there were two or
three young lady friends besides, pretty nearly of my own age,
who were occasional visitors, for longer or shorter terms; and
these visits I sometimes returned.

These were our regular social resources; but of course there
were chance visits from 'neighbours' of only five or six leagues
distance. My life was, notwithstanding, rather a solitary one,
I can assure you.

My gouvernantes had just so much control over me as yo
might conjecture such sage persons would have in the case of
a rather spoiled girl, whose only parent allowed her pretty
nearly her own way in everything.

The first occurrence in my existence, which produced a
terrible impression upon my mind, which, in fact, never has
been effaced, was one of the very earliest incidents of my life
which I can recollect. Some people will think it so trifling that
it should not be recorded here. You will see, however, by-and-
by, why I mention it. The nursery, as it was called, though I
had it all to myself, was a large room in the upper storey of the
castle, with a steep oak roof I can't have been more than six
years old, when one night I awoke, and looking round the
room from my bed, failed to see the nursery-maid. Neither was
my nurse there; and I thought myself alone. I was not
frightened, for I was one of those happy children who are
studiously kept in ignorance of ghost stories, of fairy tales, and
of all such lore as makes us cover up our heads when the door
creaks suddenly, or the flicker of an expiring candle makes the
shadow of a bed-post dance upon the wall, nearer to our faces,
I was vexed and insulted at finding myself, as I conceived,
neglected, and I began to whimper, preparatory to a hearty
bout of roaring; when to my surprise, I saw a solemn, but very
pretty face looking at me from the side of the bed. It was that
of a young lady who was kneeling, with her hands under the
coverlet. I looked at her with a kind of pleased wonder, and
ceased whimpering. She caressed me with her hands, and lay
down beside me on the bed, and drew me towards her, smiling;
I felt immediately delightfully soothed, and fell asleep again. I
was wakened by a sensation as if two needles ran into my
breast very deep at the same moment, and I cried loudly. The
lady started back, with her eyes fixed on me, and then slipped
down upon the floor, and, as I thought, hid herself under the
bed.

I was now for the first time frightened, and I yelled with all
my might and main. Nurse, nursery-maid, housekeeper, afl
came running in, and hearing my story, they made light of it,
soothing me all they could meanwhile. But, child as I was, I
could perceive that their faces were pale with an unwonted
look of anxiety, and I saw them look under the bed, and about
the room, and peep under tables and pluck open cupboards;
and the housekeeper whispered to the nurse: 'Lay your hand
along that hollow in the bed; some one did lie there, so sure as
you did not; the place is still warm.'

I remember the nursery-maid petting me, and all three
exatitining my chest, where I told them I felt the puncture,
and pronouncing that there was no sign visible that any such
thing had happened to me.

The housekeeper and the two other servants who were in
charge of the nursery, remained sitting up all night; and from
that time a servant always sat up in the nursery until I was
about fourteen.

I was very nervous for a long time after this. A doctor was
called in; he was pallid and elderly. How well I remember his
long saturnine face, slightly pitted with small-pox, and his
chestnut wig. For a good while, every second day, he came
and gave me medicine, which of course I hated.

The morning after I saw this apparition I was in a state of
terror, and could not bear to be left alone, daylight though it
was, for a moment.

I remember my father coming up and standing at the
bedside, and talking cheerfully, and asking the nurse a number
of questions, and laughing very heartily at one of the answers;
and patting me on the shoulder, and kissing me, and telling
me not to be frightened, that it was nothing but a dream and
could not hurt me.

But I was not comforted, for I knew the visit of the strange
woman was not a dream; and I was awfully frightened.

I was a little consoled by the nursery-maid's assuring me
that it was she who had come and looked at me, and lain down
beside me in the bed, and that I must have been half-dreaming
not to have known her face. But this, though supported by the
nurse, did not quite satisfy me.

I remember, in the course of that day, a venerable old man,
in a black cassock,* coming into the room with the nurse and
housekeeper, and talking a little to them, and very kindly to
me; his face was very sweet and gentle, and he told me they
were going to pray, and joined my hands together, and desired
me to say, softly, while they were praying, 'Lord hear all good
prayers for us, for Jesus' sake.' I think these were the very
words, for I often repeated them to myself, and my nurse used
for years to makc me say them in my prayers.

I remember so well the thoughtful sweet face of that white-haired
old man, in his black cassock, as he stood in that rude,
lofty, brown room, with the clumsy furniture of a fashion three
hundred years old about him, and the scanty light entering its
shadowy atmosphere through the small lattice. He kneeled,
and the three women with him, and he prayed aloud with an
earnest quavering voice for, what appeared to me, a long time.
I forget all my life preceeding that event, and for some time
after it is all obscure also, but the scenes I have
just described stand out vivid as the isolated pictures of the phantasmagoria*
surrounded by darkness.

CHAPTER II

A GUEST

I am now going to tell you something so strange that it requires all
your faith in my veracity to believe my story. It not only true,
nevertheless, but truth of which I have been an eye-witness.

It was a sweet summer evening, and my father asked me, as he
sometimes did, to take a little ramble with him along that beautiful
forest vista which I have mentioned as lying in front of the schloss.

'General Spielsdorf cannot come to us so soon as I had hoped,' said
my father, as we pursued our walk.

He was to have paid us a visit of some weeks, and we had expected his
arrival next day. He was to have brought with him a young lady, his niece
and ward, Mademoiselle Rheinfeldt, whom I had never seen, but whom I had
heard described as a very charming girl, and in whose society I had
promised myself many happy days. I was more disappointed than a young
lady living in a town, or a bustling neighbourhood can possibly imagine.
This visit, and the new acquaintance it promised, had furnished my day
dream for many weeks.

'And how soon does he come?' I asked.

'Not till autumn. Not for two months, I dare say,' he answered. 'And
I am very glad now, dear, that you never knew Mademoiselle Rheinfeldt.'

'And why?' I asked, both mortified and curious.

'Because the poor young lady is dead,' he replied. 'I quite forgot I
had not told you, but you were not in the room when I received the
General's letter this evening.'

I was very much shocked. General Spielsdorf had mentioned in his
first letter, six or seven weeks before, that she was not so well as he
would wish her, but there was nothing to suggest the remotest suspicion
of danger.

'Here is the General's letter,' he said, handing it to me. 'I am
afraid he is in great affliction; the letter appears to me to have been
written very nearly in distraction.'

We sat down on a rude bench, under a group of magnificent lime-trees.
The sun was setting with all its melancholy splendour behind the sylvan
horizon, and the stream that flows beside our home, and passes under the
steep old bridge I have mentioned, wound through many a group of noble
trees, almost at our feet, reflecting in its current the fading crimson
of the sky. General Spieldorf's letter was so extraordinary, so vehement,
and in some places so self-contradictory, that I read it twice over--the
second time aloud to my father--and was still unable to account for it,
except by supposing that grief
had unsettled his mind. It said,

'I have lost my darling daughter, for as such I loved her. During the
last days of dear Bertha's illness I was not able to write to you. Before
then I had no idea of her danger. I have lost her, and now learn all, too
late. She died in the peace of i~mocence, and in the glorious hope of a
blessed futurity. The liend who betrayed our infatuated hospitality has
done it all. I ti~ought I was receiving into my house innocence, gaiety,
a charming companion for my lost Bertha. Heavens! what a fool have I
been! I thank God my child died without a suspicion of the cause of her
sufferings. She is gone without so much as conjecturing the nature of her
illness, and the accursed passion of the agent of all this misery. I
devote my remaining days to tracking and extinguishing a monster. I am
told I may hope to accomplish my righteous and merciful purpose. At
present there is scarcely a gleam of light to guide me. I curse my
conceited incredulity, my despicable affectation of superiority, my
blindness, my obstinacy--all--too late. I cannot write or talk
collectedly now. I am distracted. So soon as I shall have a little
recovered, I mean to devote myself for a time to enquiry, which may
possibly lead me as far as Vienna. Some time in the autumn, two months
hence, or earlier if I live, I will see you--that is, if you permit me; I
will then tell you all that I scarce dare put upon paper now. Farewell.
Pray for me, dear friend.'

In these terms ended this strange letter. Though I had never seen
Bertha RheinfeIdt my eyes filled with tears at the sudden intelligence; I
was startled, as well as profoundly disappointed.

The sun had now set, and it was twilight by the time I had returned
the General's letter to my father.

It was a soft clear evening, and we loitered, speculating upon the
possible meanings of the violent and incoherent sentences which I had
just been reading. We had nearly a mile to walk before reaching the road
that passes the schloss in front, and by that time the moon was shining
brilliantly. At the drawbridge we met Madame Perrodon and Mademoiselle De
Lafontaine, who had come out, without their bonnets, to enjoy the
exquisite moonlight.

We heard their voices gabbling in animated dialogue as we
approached. We joined them at the drawbridge, and turned about to admire
with them the beautiful scene.

The glade through which we had just walked lay before us. At our left
the narrow road wound away under clumps of lordly trees, and was lost to
sight amid the thickening forrest. At the right the same road crosses the
steep and picturesque bridge, near which stands a ruined tower which once
guarded that pass; and beyond the bridge an abrupt eminence rises, covered
with trees, and showing in the shadows some grey ivyclustered rocks.

Over the sward and low grounds a thin film of mist was stealing, like
smoke, marking the distances with a transparent veil; and here and there
we could see the river faintly flashing in the moonlight.

No softer, sweeter scene could be imagined. The news I had just heard
made it melancholy; but nothing could disturb its character of profound
serenity, and the enchanted glory and vagueness of the prospect.

My father, who enjoyed the picturesque, and I, stood looking in
silence over the expanse beneath us. The two good governesses, standing a
little way behind us, discoursed upon the scene, and were eloquent upon
the moon.

Madame Perrodon was fat, middle-aged, and romantic, and talked and
sighed poetically. Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, in right of her father,
who was a German, assumed to be psychological, metaphysical, and
something of a mystic--now declared that when the moon shone with a light
so intense it was well known that it indicated a special spiritual
activity. The effect of the full moon in such a state of brilliancy was
manifold. It acted on dreams, it acted on lunacy, it acted on nervous
people; it had marvellous physical influences con~ected with life.
Mademoiselle related that her cousin, who was mate of a merchant ship,
having taken a nap on deck on such a night, lying on his back, with his
face full in the light of the moon, had wakened, after a dream of an old
woman clawing him by the cheek, with his features horribly drawn to one
side; and his countenance had never quite recovered its equilibrium.

'The moon, this night,' she said, 'is full of odylic and magnetic
infiuence*--and see, when you look behind you at tthe front of the
schloss, how all its windows flash and twinkle with that silvery
splendour, as if unseen hands had lighted up the rooms to receive fairy
guests.'

There are indolent states of the spirits in which, indisposed to talk
ourselves, the talk of others is pleasant to our listless ears; and I
gazed on, pleased with the tinkle of the ladies' conversation.

'I have got into one of my moping moods to-night,' said my lilther,
after a silence, and quoting Shakespeare, whom, by way of keeping up our
English, he used to read aloud, he said:

"'In truth I know not why I am so sad:
It wearies me; you say it wearies you;
But how I got it--came by it."*

'I forget the rest. But I feel as if some great misfortune were
hanging over us. I suppose the poor General's afflicted letter has had
something to do with it.'

At this moment the unwonted sound of carriage wheels and many hoofs
upon the road, arrested our attention.

They seemed to be approaching from the high overlooking the bridge,
and very soon the equipage from that point. Two horsemen first crossed
the bridge, came a carriage drawn by four horses, and two men rode behind.

It seemed to be the travelling carriage of a person of rank; and we
were all immediately absorbed in watching that unusual spectacle. It
became, in a few moments, greatly more interesting, for just as the
carriage had passed the summit of the steep bridge, one of the leaders,
taking fright, communicated his panic to the rest, and after a plunge or
two, the whole team broke into a wild gallop together, and dashing
between the horsemen who rode in front, came thundering along the road
towards us with the speed of a hurricane.

The excitement of the scene was made more painful by the clear,
long-drawn screams of a female voice from the carriage window.

We all advanced in curiosity and horror; my father in silence, the
rest with various ejaculations of terror.

Our suspense did not last long. Just before you reach the castle
drawbridge, on the route they were coming, there stands by the roadside a
magnificent lime-tree, on the other side stands an ancient stone cross,
at sight of which the horses, now going at a pace that was perfectly
frightful, swerved so as to bring the wheel over the projecting roots of
the tree.

I knew what was coming. I covered my eyes, unable to see it out, and
turned my head away; at the same moment I heard a cry from my
lady-friends, who had gone on a little.

Curiosity opened my eyes, and I saw a scene of utter confusion. Two
of the horses were on the ground, the carriage lay upon its side with two
wheels in the air; the men were busy removing the traces, and a lady,
with a commanding air and figure, had got out, and stood with clasped
hands, raising the handkerchief that was in them every now and then to
her eyes. Through the carriage door was now lifted a young lady, who
appeared to be lifeless. My dear old father was already beside the eider
lady, with his hat in his hand, evidently tendering his aid and the
resources of his schloss. The lady did not appear to hear him, or to have
eyes for anything but the slender girl who was being placed against the
slope of the bank.

I approached; the young lady was apparently stunned, but she was
certainly not dead. My father, who piqued himself on being something of a
physician, had just had his fingers to her wrist and assured the lady,
who declared herself her mother, that her pulse, though faint and
irregular, was undoubtedly still distinguishable. The lady clasped her
hands and looked upward, as if in a momentary transport of gratitude; but
immediately she broke out again in that theatrical way which is, I
believe, natural to some people.

She was what is called a fine-looking woman for her time of life, and
must have been handsome; she was mil, but not thin, and dressed in black
velvet, and looked rather pale, but with a pround and commanding
countenance, though now agitated strangely.

'Was ever being so born to calamity?' I heard her say, with clasped
hands, as I came up. 'Here am I, on a journey of life and death, in
prosecuting which to lose an hour is possibly to lose all. My child will
not have recovered sufficiently to resume her route for who can say how
long. I must leave her; I cannot, dare not, delay. How far on, sir, can
you tell, is the nearest village? I must leave her there; and shall not
see my darling, or even hear of her till my return, three months hence.'

I plucked my father by the coat, and whispered earnestly in his ear:
'Oh! papa, pray ask her to let her stay with us--it would be so
delightful. Do, pray.'
'If Madame will entrust her child to the care of my daughter, aad of
her good gouvernante, Madame Perrodon, and permit her to remain as our
guest, under my charge, until her return, it will confer a distinction
and an obligation upon us, and we shall treat her with all the care and
devotion which so sacred a trust deserves.'

'I cannot do that, sir, it would be to task your kindness and
chivalry too cruelly,' said the lady, distractedly.

'It would, on the contrary, be to confer on us a very great kindness
at the moment when we most need it. My daughter has just been
disappointed by a cruel misfortune, in a visit from which she had long
anticipated a great deal of happiness. If you confide this young lady to
our care it will be her best consolation. The nearest village on your
route is distant, and affords no such inn as you could think of placing
your daughter at; you cannot allow her to continue her journey for any
considerable distance without danger. If, as you say, you cannot suspend
your journey, you must part with her to-night, and nowhere could you do
so with more honest assurances of care and tenderness than here.'

There was something in this lady's air and appearance so
distinguished, and even imposing, and in her manner so engaging, as to
impress one, quite apart from the dignity of her equipage, with a
conviction that she was a person of consequence.

By this time the carriage was replaced in its upright position, and
the horses, quite tractable, in the traces* again.

The lady threw on her daughter a glance which I fancied was not quite
so affectionate as one might have anticipated from the beginning of the
scene; then she beckoned slightly to my father, and withdrew two or three
steps with him out of hearing; and talked to him with a fixed and stern
countenance, not at all like that with which she had hitherto spoken.

I was filled with wonder that my father did not seem to perceive the
change, and also unspeakably curious to learn what it could be that she
was speaking, almost in his ear, with so much earnestness and rapidity.
Two or three minutes at most I think she remained thus employed, then
she turned, and a few steps brought her to where her daughter lay,
supported by Madame Perrodon. She kneeled beside her for a moment and
whispered, as Madame supposed, a little benediction in her ear; then
hastily kissing her she stepped into her carriage, the door was closed,
the footmen in stately liveries jumped up behind, the outriders spurred
on, the postillions cracked their whips, the horses plunged and broke
suddenly into a furious canter that threatened soon again to become a
gallop, and the carriage whirled away, followed at the same rapid pace by
the two horsemen in the rear.

CHAPTER III

WE COMPARE NOTES

We followed the cortege* with our eyes until it was swiftly lost to sight
in the misty wood; and the very sound of the hoofs and the wheels died
away in the silent night air.

Nothing remained to assure us that the adventure had not been an
illusion of a moment but the young lady, who just at that moment opened
her eyes. I could not see, for her face was turned from me, but she
raised her head, evidently looking about her, and I heard a very sweet
voice ask complainingly, 'Where is mamma?'

Our good Madame Perrodon answered tenderly, and added some
comfortable assurances. I then heard her ask:

'Where am I? What is this place?' and after that she said, 'I don't
see the carriage; and Matska,* where is she?'

Madame answered all her questions in so far as she understood them;
and gradually the young lady remembered how the misadventure came about,
and was glad to hear that no one in, or in attendance on, the carriage
was hurt; and on learning that her mamma had left her here, till her
return in about three months, she wept.

I was going to add my consolations to those of Madame l'crrodon when
Mademoiselle De Lafontaine placed her hand on my arm, saying:

'Don't approach, one at a time is as much as she can at present converse
with; a very little excitement would possibly overpower her now.'

As soon as she is comfortably in bed, I thought, I will run up to her
room and see her.

My father in the meantime had sent a servant on horseback for the
physician, who lived about two leagues away; and a bed-room was being
prepared for the young lady's reception.

The stranger now rose, and leaning on Madame's arm walked slowly over
the drawbridge and into the castle gate.

In the hall, servants waited to receive her, and she was conducted
forthwith to her room.

The room we usually sat in as our drawing-room is long, having four
windows, that looked over the moat and drawbridge, upon the forest scene
I have just described.

It is furnished in old carved oak, with large carved cabinets, and
the chairs are cushioned with crimson Utrecht velvet. The walls are
covered with tapestry, and surrounded with great' gold frames, the
figures being as large as life, in ancient and very curious costume, and
the subjects represented are hun ing, hawking, and generally festive. It
is not too stately to extremely comfortable; and here we had our tea, for
with usual patriotic leanings my father insisted that the beverage should
make its appearance regularly with our and chocolate.

We sat here this night, and with candles lighted, were talking over
the adventure of the evening.

Madame Perrodon and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine were both of our
party. The young stranger had hardly lain down in her bed when she sank
into a deep sleep; and those ladies had left her in the care of a servant.

'How do you like our guest?' I asked, as soon as Madam entered. 'Tell
me all about her.'

'I like her extremely,' answered Madame, 'she is,I almost think, the
prettiest creature I ever saw; about your age, and so gentle and nice.'

'She is absolutely beautiful,' threw in Mademoiselle, who had peeped
for a moment into the stranger's room.

'And such a sweet voice!' added Madame Perrodon.

'Did you remark a woman in the carriage, after it was set up again, who
did not get out,' inquired Mademoiselle, 'but
only looked from the window?' 'No, we had not seen her.'

Then she described a hideous black woman, with a sort of coloured
turban on her head, who was gazing all the time from the carriage window,
nodding and grinning derisively towards the ladies, with gleaming eyes
and large white eye-balls, and her teeth set as if in fury.

'Did you remark what an iII-looking pack of men the servants were?'
asked Madame.

'Yes,' said my father, who had just come in, 'ugly, hang-dog looking
fellows, as ever I beheld in my life. I hope they mayn't rob the poor
lady in the forest. They are clever rogues, however; they got everything
to rights in a minute.'

'I dare say they are worn out with too long travelling,' said Madame.
'Besides looking wicked, their faces were so strangely lean, and dark,
and sullen. I am very curious, I own; but I dare say the young lady will
tell us all about it to-morrow, if she is sufficiently recovered.'

'I don't think she will,' said my father, with a mysterious smile,
and a little nod of his head, as if he knew more about it than he cared
to tell us.

This made me all the more inquisitive as to what had passed between
him and the lady in the black velvet, in the brief but earnest
interview that had immediately preceded her departure.

We were scarcely alone, when I entreated him to tell me. He did not
need much pressing.

'There is no particular reason why I should not tell you. She
expressed a reluctance to trouble us with the care of her daughter,
saying she was in delicate health, and nervous, but not subject to any
kind of seizure----she volunteered that--nor to any illusion; being, in
fact, perfectly sane.'

'How very odd to say all that? I interpolated. 'It was so
unnecessary.'

'At all events it was said,' he laughed, 'and as you wish to know all
that passed, which was indeed very little, I tell you. She then said, "I
am making a long journey of vital importance"--she emphasized the
word--"rapid and secret; I shall return for my child in three months; in
the meantime, she will be silent as to who we are, whence we come, and
whither we are travelling.' That is all she said. She spoke very pure
French. When she said the word "secret", she paused for a few seconds,
looking sternly, her eyes fixed on mine. I fancy she makes a great point
of that. You saw how quickly she was gone. I hope I have not done a very
foolish thing, in taking charge of the young lady.'

For my part, I was delighted. I was longing to see and talk to her;
and only waiting till the doctor should give me leave. You, who live in
towns, can have no idea how great an event the introduction of a new
friend is, in such a solitude surrounded us.

The doctor did not arrive till nearly one o'clock; but I could no
more have gone to my bed and slept, than I could have overtaken, on foot,
the carriage in which the princess velvet had driven away.

When the physician came down to the drawing-room, it wa~i to report
very favourably upon his patient. She was now sitting: up, her pulse
quite regular, apparently perfectly well. She sustained no injury, and
the little shock to her nerves passed away quite harmlessly. There could
be no certainly in my seeing her, if we both wished it; and, with
permission, I sent, forthwith, to me to visit her for a few minutes in
her room.

The servant returned immediately to say that she nothing more.

You may be sure I was not long in availing myself of this permission.

Our visitor lay in one of the handsomest rooms in the schloss. It
was, perhaps, a little stately. There was a sombre piece of tapestry
opposite the foot of the bed, representing Cleopatra with the asp to her
bosom;* and other solemn classic scenes were displayed, a little faded,
upon the other walls. But there was gold carving, and rich and varied
colour enough in the other decorations of the room, to more than redeem
the gloom of the old tapestry.

There were candles at the bed-side. She was sitting up; her slender
pretty figure enveloped in the soft silk dressing gown, embroidered with
flowers, and lined with thick quilted silk, which her mother had thrown
over her feet as she lay upon the ground.

What was it that, as I reached the bed-side and had just begun my
little greeting, struck me dumb in a moment, and made me recoil a step or
two from before her? I wiII tell you.

I saw the very face which had visited me in my childhood at night,
which remained so fixed in my memory, and on which I had for so many
years so often ruminated with horror, when no one suspected of what I was
thinking.

It was pretty, even beautiful; and when I first beheld it, wore the
same melancholy expression.

But this almost instantly lighted into a strange fixed smile of
recognition.
There was a silence of fully a minute, and then at length she spoke; I
could not.

'How wonderful!' she exclaimed, 'Twelve years ago, I saw your face in
a dream, and it has haunted me ever since.'

'Wonderful indeed? I repeated, overcoming with an effort the horror
that had for a time suspended my utterances. 'Twelve years ago, in vision
or reality, I certainly saw you. I could not forget your face. It has
remained before my eyes ever since.'

Her smile had softened. Whatever I had fancied strange in it, was
gone, and it and her dimpling cheeks were now delightfully pretty and
intelligent.

I felt reassured, and continued more in the vein which hospitality
indicated, to bid her welcome, and to tell her how much pleasure her
accidental arrival had given us all, and especially what a happiness it
was to me.

I took her hand as I spoke. I was a little shy, as lonely people are,
but the situation made me eloquent, and even bold. She pressed my hand,
she laid hers upon it, and her eyes glowed, as, looking hastily into
mine, she smiled again, and blushed.

She answered my welcome very prettily. I sat down beside her, still
wondering; and she said:

'I must tell you my vision about you; it is so very strange that you
and I should have had, each of the other so vivid a dream, that each
should have seen, I you and you me, looking as we do now, when of course
we both were mere children. I was a child, about six years old, and I
awoke from a confused and troubled dream, and found myself in a room,
unlike my nursery, wainscoted clumsily in some dark wood, and with
cupboards and bedsteads, and chairs, and benches placed about it. The
beds were, I thought, all empty, and the room itself without anyone but
myself in it; and I, after looking about me for some time, and admiring
especially an iron candlestick, with two branches, which I should
certainly know. again, crept under one of the beds to reach the window;
but as I got from under the bed, I heard some one crying; and looking,
up, while I was still upon my knees, you--as I see you now; a beautiful
young lady, with hair and large blue eyes, and lips--your lips--you, as
you here. Your looks won me; I climbed on the bed and put arms about you,
and I think we both fell asleep. I was by a scream; you were sitting up
screaming. I was and slipped down upon the ground, and, it seemed to me,
consciousness for a moment; and when I came to myself, I again in my
nursery at home. Your face since. I could not be misled by mere
resemblance. You an lady whom I then saw.'

It was now my turn to relate my corresponding " which I did, to the
undisguised wonder of my acquaintance.

'I don't know which should be most afraid of the other,' said,
again smiling--'If you were less pretty I think I be very much afraid of
you, but being as you are, and' I both so young, I feel only that I have
made ance twelve years ago, and have already a right to intimacy; at all
events it does seem as if we were from our earliest childhood, to be
friends. I wonder you feel as strangely drawn towards me as I do to you;
I never had a friend--shall I find one now?' She sighed, and fine dark
eyes gazed passionately on me.

Now the truth is, I felt rather unaccountably towards the beautiful
stranger. I did feel, as she said, 'drawn towards her', but there was
also something of repulsion. In this feeling, however, the sense of
attraction immensely prevailed. She interested and won me; she was so
beautiful and so indescribably engaging.

I perceived now something of langour and exhaustion stealing over
her, and hastened to bid her good night.

'The doctor thinks', I added, 'that you ought to have a maid to sit
up with you to-night; one of ours is waiting, and you will find her a
very useful and quiet creature.'

'How kind of you, but I could not sleep, I never could with an
attendant in the room. I shan't require any assistance-and, shall I
confess my weakness, ! am haunted with a terror of robbers. Our house was
robbed once, and two servants murdered, so ! always lock my door. It has
become a habit-and you look so kind I know you will forgive me. I see
there is a key in the lock.'

She held me close in her pretty arms for a moment and whispered in my
ear, 'Good night, darling, it is very hard to part with you, but
good-night; to-morrow, but not early, I shall see you again.'

She sank back on the pillow with a sigh, and her fine eyes followed
me with a fond and melancholy gaze, and she murmured again 'Good-night,
dear friend.'

Young people like, and even love, on impulse. I was flattered by the
evident, though as yet undeserved, fondness she showed me. I liked the
confidence with which she at once received me. She was determined that we
should be very near friends.

Next day came and we met again. I was delighted with my companion;
that is to say, in many respects.

Her looks lost nothing in daylight--she was certainly the most
beautiful creature I had ever seen, and the unpleasant remembrance of the
face presented in my early dream, had lost the effect of the first
unexpected recognition.

She confessed that she had experienced a similar shock on seeing me,
and precisely the same faint antipathy that had mingled with my
admiration of her. We now laughed together over our momentary horrors.

CHAPTER IV

HER HABITS-A SAUNTER

I told you that I was charmed with her in most particulars.

There were some that did not please me so well.

She was above the middle height of women. I shall begin by
describing her. She was slender, and wonderfully graceful.
Except that her movements were languid-vety languid-
indeed, there was nothing in her appearance to indicate an
mvalid. Her complexion was rich and brilliant; her features
were small and beautifully formed; her eyes large, dark, and
lustrous; her hair was quite wonderful, I never saw hair so
magnificently thick and long when it was down about her
shoulders; I have often placed my hands under it, and laughed
with wonder at its weight. It was exquisitely fine and soft, and
in colour a rich very dark brown, with something of gold. I
loved to let it down, tumbling with its own weight, as, in her
room, she lay back in her chair talking in her sweet low voice,
I used to fold and braid it, and spread it out and play with it.
Heavens! If I had but known all!

I said there were particulars which did not please me. I
have told you that her confidence won me the first night I saw
her; but I found that she excercised with respect to herself, her
mother, her history, everything in fact connected with her life,
plans, and people, an ever wakeful reserve. I dare say I was
unreasonable, perhaps I was wrong; I dare say I ought to have
respected the solemn injunction laid upon my father by the
stately lady in black velvet. But curiosity is a restless and
unscrupulous passion, and no one girl can endure, with
patience, that her's should be baffled by another. What harm
could it do anyone to tell me what I so ardently desired to
know? Had she no trust in my good sense or honour? Why
would she not believe me when I assured her, so solemnly,
that I would not divulge one syllable of what she told me to
any mortal breathing?

There was a coldness, it seemed to me, beyond her years, in
her, smiling melancholy persistent refusal to afford me the least
ray light.

I cannot say we quarrelled upon this point, for she would
not i, Quarrel upon any. It was, of course, very unfair of me to
press her, very ill-bred, but I really could not help it; and I
might just as well have let it alone.

What she did tell me amounted, in my unconscionable
estimation-to nothing.

It was all summed up in three very vague disclosures:

First.-Her name was Carmilla.

Second.-Her family was very ancient and noble.

Third.-Her home lay in the direction of the west.

She would not tell me the name of her family, nor their
armorial bearings, nor the name of their estate, nor even that
of the country they lived in.

You are not to suppose that I worried her incessantly on
these subjects. I watched for opportunity, and rather insin-
uated than urged my inquiries. Once or twice, indeed, I did
attack her more directly. But no matter what my tactics, utter
failure was invariably the result. Reproaches and caresses were
all lost upon her. But I must add this, that her evasion was
conducted with so pretty a melancholy and deprecation, with
so many, and even passionate declarations of her liking for me,
and trust in my honour, and with so many promises that I
should at last know all, that I could not find it in my heart
long to be offended with her.

Sht used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me
to her, and laying her cheek to mine, murmur with her lips
near my ear, 'Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me
not c ruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength
and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart
bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation
I live in your warm life, and vou shall die-die, sweetly die-
into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your
turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that
cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more
of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit.'

And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press
me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft
kisses gently glow upon my cheek.

Her agitations and her language were unintelligible to me.

From these foolish embraces, which were not of very fre-
quent occurrence, I must allow, I used to wish to extricate
myself; but my energies seemed to fail me. Her murmured
words sounded like a lullaby in my ear, and soothed my
resistance into a trance, from which I only seemed to recover
myself when she withdrew her arms.

In these mysterious moods I did not like her. I experienced
a strange tumultuous excitement that was pleasurable, ever
and anon, mingled with a vague sense of fear and disgust. I
had no distinct thoughts about her while such scenes lasted,
but I was conscious of a love growing into adoration, and also
of abhorrence. This I know is paradox, but I can make no
other attempt to explain the feeling.

I now write, after an interval of more than ten years, with a
trembling hand, with a confused and horrible recollection of
certain occurrences and situations, in the ordeal through which
I was unconsciously passing; though with a vivid and verv
sharp remembrance of the main current of my story. But, I
suspect, in all lives there are certain emotional scenes, those in
which our passions have been most wildly and terribly roused,
that are of all others the most vaguely and dimly remembered.

Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful
companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond
pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in
my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast; that her
dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration. It
was like the ardour of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful
and yet overpowering; and with gloating eyes she drew
me to her, and her hot lips travelled along my cheek in kisses;
and she would whisper, almost in sobs, 'You are mine, you
shall be mine, you and I are one for ever.' Then she has thrown
herself back in her chair, with her small hands over her eyes,
leaving me trembling.

'Are we related,' I used to ask; 'what can you mean by all
this? I remind vou perhaps of some one whom you love; but
you must not, I hate it; I don't know you-I don't know
myself when you look so and talk so.'

She used to sigh at my vehemence, then turn away and drop
my hand.

Respecting these very extraordinary manifestations I strove
in vain to form any satisfactory theory-I could not refer them
to affectation or trick. It was unmistakably the momentary
breaking out of suppressed instinct and emotion. Was she,
notwithstanding her mother's volunteered denial, subject to
brief visitations of insanity; or was there here a disguise and a
romance? I had read in old story books of such things. What if
a boyish lover had found his way into the house, and sought
to persecute his suit in masquerade, with the assistance of a
clever old adventuress? But there were many things against
this hypothesis, highly interesting as it was to my vanity.

I could boast of no little attentions such as masculine
gallantry delights to offer. Between these passionate moments
there were long intervals of common-place, of gaiety, of
brooding melancholy, during which, except that I detected her
eves so full of melancholy fire, following me, at times I might
have seen as nothing to her. Except in these brief periods of
mysterious excitement her ways were girlish; and there was
always a langour about her, quite incompatible with a mascu-
line system in a state of health.

In some respects her habits were odd. Perhaps not so
singullar in the opinion of a town lady like you, as they
appeareded to us rustic people. She used to come down very late,
generally not till one o'clock. She would then take a cup of
chocolate, but eat nothing; we then went out for a walk, which
was a mere saunter, and she seemed, almost immediately,
exhausted, and either returned to the schloss or sat on one of
benches that were placed, here and there, among the trees.
This was a bodily langour in which her mind did not sympa-
thize. She was always an animated talker, and very intelligent.

She sometimes alluded for a moment to her own home, or
mentioned an adventure or situation, or an early recollection,
which indicated a people of strange manners, and described
customs of which we knew nothing. I gathered from these
chance hints that her native country was much more remote
than I had at first fancied.

As we sat thus one afternoon under the trees a funeral
passed us by. It was that of a pretty young girl, whom I had
often seen, the daughter of one of the rangers of the forest. The
poor man was walking behind the coffin of his darling; she was
his only child, and he looked quite heartbroken. Peasants
walkmg two-and-two came behind, they were singing a funeral
hymn.

I rose to mark my respect as they passed, and joined in the
hymn they were very sweetly singing.

My companion shook me a little roughly, and I turned
surprised.

She said brusquely, 'Don't you perceive how discordant that
is?'

'I think it very sweet, on the contrary,' I answered, vexed at
the interruption, and very uncomfortable, lest the people who
composed the little procession should observe and resent what
was passing.

I resumed, therefore, instantly, and was again interrupted.
You pierce my ears,' said Carmilla, almost angrily, and
stopping her ears with her tiny fingers. 'Besides, how can you
tell that your religion and mine are the same; your forms
wound me, and I hate funerals. What a fuss! Why you must
die-eveyone must die; and all are happier when they do.
Come home.'

'My father has gone on with the clergyman to the church-
yard. I thought you knew she was to be buried to day.'

'She? I don't trouble my head about peasants. I don't know
who she is,' answered Carmilla, with a flash from her fine eyes.

'She is the poor girl who fancied she saw a ghost a fortnight
ago, and has been dying ever since, till yesterday, when she
expired .'

'Tell me nothing about ghosts. I shan't sleep to-night if you
do.'

'I hope there is no plague or fever comming; all this looks very
like it,' I continued. 'The swineherd's young wife died only a
week ago, and she thought something seized her by the throat
as she lay in her bed, and nearly strangled her. Papa says such
horrible fancies do accompany some forms of fever. She was
quite well the day before. She sank afterwards, and died before
a week.'

'Well, her funeral is over, I hope, and her hymn sung; and
our ears shan't be tortured with that discord and jargon. It
has made me nervous. Sit down here, beside me; sit close; hold
my hand; press it hard-hard-harder.'

Wt had moved a little back, and had come to another seat.

She sat down. Her face underwent a change that alarmed
and even terrified me for a moment. It darkened, and became
horribly livid; her teeth and hands were clenched, and she
Owned and compressed her lips, while she stared down upon
ground at her feet, and trembled all over with a continued
adder as irrepressible as ague. All her energies seemed
strained to suppress a fit, with which she was then breathlessly
tugging; and at length a low convulsive cry of suffering broke
from her, and gradually the hysteria subsided. 'There! That
comes of strangling people with hymns!' she said at last. 'Hold
me, hold me still. It is passing away.'

And so gradually it did; and perhaps to dissipate the sombre
impression which the spectacle had left upon me, she became
unusually animated and chatty; and so we got home.

This was the first time I had seen her exhibit any definable
symptoms of that delicacy of health which her mother had
spoken of. It was the first time, also, I had seen her exhibit
anything like temper.

Both passed away like a summer cloud; and never but once
afterwards did I witness on her part a momentary sign of
anger. I will tell you how it happened.

She and I were looking out of one of the long drawing-room
windows, when there entered the court-yard, over the draw-
bridgt, a figure of a wanderer whom I knew very well. He
used to visit the schloss generally twice a year.

It was the figure of a hunchback, with the sharp lean
features that generally accompany deformity. He wore a
pointed black beard, and he was smiling from ear to ear,
showing his white fangs. He was dressed in buff, black, and
scarlet, and crossed with more straps and belts than I could
count, from which hung all manner of things. Behind, he
carried a magic-lantern, and two boxes, which I well knew, in
one of which was a salamander, and in the other a mandrake
These monsters used to make my father laugh. They were
compounded of parts of monkeys, parrots, squirrels, fish, and
hedgehogs, dried and stitched together with great neatness
and startling effect. He had a fiddle, a box of conjuring
apparatus, a pair of foils and masks attached to his belt
several other mysterious cases dangling about him, and a black
staff with copper ferrules in his hand. His companion was a
rough spare dog, that followed at his heels, but stopped short
suspiciously at the drawbridge, and in a little while began to
howl dismally.

In the meantime, the mountebank, standing in the midst of
the court-yard, raised his grotesque hat, and made us a very
ceremonious bow, paying his compliments very volubly in
execrable French, and German not much better. Then, disen-
gaging his fiddle, he began to scrape a lively air, to which he
sang with a merry discord, dancing with ludicrous airs and
activity, that made me laugh, in spite of the dog's howling.

Then he advanced to the window with many smiles and
salutations, and his hat in his left hand, his fiddle under his
arm, and with a fluency that never took breath he gabbled a
long advertisement of all his accomplishments, and the
resources of the various arts which he placed at our service,
and the curiosities and entertainments which it was in his
power, at our bidding, to display.

'Will your ladyships be pleased to buy an amulet against
the oupire,* which is going like the wolf, I hear, through these
woods,' he said, dropping his hat on the pavement. 'They are
dying of it right and left, and here is a charm that never fails;
only pinned to the pillow, and you may laugh in his face.'

These charms consisted of oblong slips of vellum, with
cabalistic ciphers and diagrams upon them.

Carmilla instantly purchased one, and so did I.

He was looking up, and we were smiling down upon him,
amused; at least, I can answer for myself. His piercing black
eye, as he looked up in our faces, seemed to detect something
that fixed for a moment his curiosity.

In an instant he unrolled a leather case, full of all manner of
odd little steel instruments.

'See here, my lady,' he said, displaying it, and addressing
me ' I profess, among other things less useful, the art of
dentistry. Plague take the dog!' he interpolated. 'Silence, beast!
He howls so that your ladyships can scarcely hear a word.
Your noble friend, the young lady at your right, has the
sharpest tooth,-long, thin, pointed, like an awl, like a needle;
ha, ha! With my sharp and long sight, as I look up, I have
seen it distinctly; now if it happens to hurt the young lady,
and I think it must, here am I, here are my file, my punch, my
nippers; I will make it round and blunt, if her ladyship pleases;
no longer the tooth of a fish, but of a beautiful young lady as
she is. Hey? Is the young lady displeased? Have I been too
bold? Have I offended her?'

The young lady, indeed, looked very angry as she drew back
from the window.

'How dares that mountebank insult us so? Where is your
father? I shall demand redress from him. My father would
have had the wretch tied up to the pump, and flogged with a
cart-whip, and burnt to the bones with the castle brand!'

She retired from the window a step or two, and sat down,
and had hardly lost sight of the offender, when her wrath
subsided as suddenly as it had risen, and she gradually
recovered her usual tone, and seemed to forget the little
hunchback and his follies.

My father was out of spirits that evening. On coming in he
told us that there had been another case very similar to the
two fatal ones which had lately occurred. The sister of a young
peasant on his estate, only a mile away, was very ill, had been,
as she described it, attacked very nearly in the same way, and
was now slowly but steadily sinking.

'All this,' said my father, 'is strictly referable to natural
causes. These poor people infect one another with their
superstitions, and so repeat in imagination the images of terror
that have infested their neighbours.'

'But that very circumstance frightens one horribly,' said
Carmilla.

'How so?' inquired my father.

'I am so afraid of fancying I see such things; I think it would
be as bad as reality.'

'We are in God's hands; nothing can happen without His
permission, and all will end well for those who love Him. He
is our faithful creator; He has made us all, and will take care
of us.'

'Creator! Nature!' said the young lady in answer to my gentle
father. 'And this disease that invades the country is natural
Nature. All things proceed from Nature-don't they? All
things in the heaven, in the earth, and under the earth, act
and live as Nature ordains? I think so.'

'The doctor said he would come here to-day,' said my father,
after a silence. 'I want to know what he thinks about it, and
what he thinks we had better do.'

'Doctors never did me any good,' said Carmilla.

'Then you have been ill?' I asked.

'More ill than ever you were,' she answered.

'Long ago?'

'Yes, a long time. I suffered from this very illness; but I
forget all but my pain and weakness, and they were not so bad
as are suffered in other diseases.'

'You were very young then?'

'I dare say; let us talk no more of it. You would not wound
a friend?' She looked languidly in my eyes, and passed her
arm round my waist lovingly, and led me out of the room. My
father was busy over some papers near the window.

'Why does your papa like to frighten us?' said the pretty
girl, with a sigh and a little shudder.

'He doesn't, dear Carmilla, it is the very furthest thing from
his mind.

'Are you afraid, dearest?'

'I should be very much if I fancied there was any real
danger of my being attacked as those poor people were.'

'You are afraid to die?'

'Yes, every one is.'

'But to die as lovers may-to die together, so that they may
live together. Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world,
to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the
meantime there are grubs and larvae, don't you see-each
with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structure. So
says Monsieur Buffon,* in his big book, in the next room.'

Later in the day the doctor came and was closeted with
papa for some time. He was a skilful man, of sixty and
upwards He wore powder, and shaved his pale face as smooth
as a pumpkin. He and papa emerged from the room together,
and heard papa laugh, and say as they came out:

'Well. I do wonder at a wise man like you. What do you say
to hippogriffs* and dragons?'

The doctor was smiling, and made answer, shaking his
head-

'Nevertheless life and death are mysterious states, and we
know little of the resources of either.'

And so they walked on, and I heard no more. I did not then
know what the doctor had been broaching, but I think I guess
of it now.

CHAPTER V

A WONDERFUL LIKENESS

This evening there arrived from Gratz the grave, dark-faced
son of the picture cleaner, with a horse and cart laden with
two large packing cases, having many pictures in each. It was
a journey of ten leagues,* and whenever a messenger arrived
at the schloss from our little capital of Gratz, we used to crowd
about him in the hall, to hear the news.

This arrival created in our seduded quarters quite a sensa-
tion. The cases remained in the hall, and the messenger was
taken charge of by the servants till he had eaten his supper.
Then with assistants, and armed with hammer, ripping-chisel,
and turnscrew, he met us in the hall, where we had assembled
to witness the unpacking of the cases.

Carmilla sat looking listlessly on, while one after the other
the old pictures, nearly all portraits, which had undergone the
process of renovation, were brought to light. My mother was
of an old Hungarian family, and most of these pictures, which
were about to be restored to their places, had come to us
through her.

My father had a list in his hand, from which he read, as the
artist rummaged out the corresponding numbers. I don't know
that the pictures were very good, but they were, undoubtedly,
very old, and some of them very curious also. They had, for
the most part, the merit of being now seen by me, I may say,
for the first time; for the smoke and dust of time had all but
obliterated them.

'There is a picture that I have not seen yet,' said my father.
'In one corner, at the top of it, is the name, as well as I could
read, "Marcia Karnstein", and the date "1698"; and 1 am
curious to see how it has turned out.'

I remembered it; it was a small picture, about a foot and a
half high, and nearly square, without a frame; but it was so
blackened by age that I could not make it out.

The artist now produced it, with evident pride. It was quite
beautiful; it was startling; it seemed to live. It was the ef~.%v of
Carmilla!

'Carmilla, dear, here is an absolute miracle. Here you are,
living, smiling, ready to speak, in this picture. Isn't it beau tiful,
papa? And see, even the little mole on her throat.'

My father laughed, and said 'Certainly it is a wodnderful
likeness,' but he looked away, and to my surprise seemed but
little struck by it, and went on talking to the picture cleaner,
who was also something of an artist, and discoursed with
intelligence about the portraits or other works, which his art
had just brought into light and colour, while I was more and
more lost in wonder the more I looked at the picture.

'Will you let me hang this picture in my room, papa?' I
asked.

'Certainly, dear,' said he, smiling, 'I'm very glad you think
it so like. It must be prettier even than I thought it, if it is.'

The young lady did not acknowledge this pretty speech, did
not seem to hear it. She was leaning back in her seat, her fine
eyes under their long lashes gazing on me in contemplation,
and she smiled in a kind of rapture.

'And now you can read quite plainly the name that is
written in the corner. It is not Marcia; it looks as if it was done
in gold. The name is Mircalla, Countess Karnstein, and this is
a little coronet over it, and underneath AD 1698. I am
descended from the Karnsteins; that is, mamma was.'

'Ah? said the lady, languidly, 'so am I, I think, a very long
descent, very ancient. Are there any Karnsteins living now?'

'None who bear the name, I believe. The family were ruined,
I believe, in some civil wars, long ago, but the ruins of the
castle are only about three miles away.'

'How interestmg. she said, languidly. 'But see what beauti-
ful moonlight!' She glanced through the hall-door, which stood
a little open. 'Suppose you take a little ramble round the court,
and look down at the road and river.'

'It is so like the night you came to us,' I said.

She sighed, smiling.

She rose, and each with her arm about the other's waist, we
walked out upon the pavement.

In silence, slowly we walked down to the drawbridge, where
the beautiful landscape opened before us.

'And so you were thinking of the night I came here?' she
almost whispered. 'Are you glad I came?'

'Delighted, dear Carmilla,' I answered.

'And you asked for the picture you think like me, to hang in
your room,' she murmured with a sigh, as she drew her arm
closer about my waist, and let her pretty head sink upon my
shoulder.

'How romantic you are, Carmilla,' I said. 'Whenever you
tell me your story, it will be made up chiefly of some one great
romance. '

She kissed me silendy.

'I am sure, Carmilla, you have been in love; that there is, at
this moment, an affair of the heart going on.'

'I have been in love with no one, and never shall,' she
whispered, 'unless it should be with you.'

How beautiful she looked in the moonlight!

Shy and strange was the look with which she quickly hid
her face in my neck and hair, with tumultuous sighs, that
seemed almost to sob, and pressed in mine a hand that
trembled.

Her soft cheek was glowing against mine. 'Darling, darling,'
she murmured, 'I live in you; and you would die for me, I love
you so.'

I started from her.

She was gazing on me with eyes from which all fire, all
meaning had flown, and a face colourless and apathetic.

'Is there a chill in the air, dear?' she said drowsily. 'I almost
shiver; have I been dreaming? Let us come in. Come; come;
Come in.'

'You look ill, Carmilla; a little faint. You certainly must take
some wine,' I said.

'Yes, I will. I'm better now. I shall be quite well in a few~
minutes. Yes, do give me a little wine,' answered CarmilIa,
we approached the door. 'Let us look again for a moment; it
the last time, perhaps, I shall see the moonlight with you.'

'How do you feel now, dear Carmilla? Are you really better?'
I asked.

I was beginning to take alarm, lest she should have been
stricken with the strange epidemic that they said had invaded
the country about us.

'Papa would be grieved beyond measure,' I added, 'if he
thought you were ever so little ill, without immediately letting
us know. We have a very skilful doctor near this, the physician
who was with papa to-day.'

'I'm sure he is. I know how kind you all are; but, dear child,
I am quite well again. There is nothing ever wrong with me,
but a little weakness. People say I am languid; I am incapable
of exertion; I can scarcely walk as far as a child of three years
old; and every now and then the little strength I have falters,
and I become as you have just seen me. But after all I am very
easily set up again; in a moment I am perfectly myself. See
how I have recovered.'

So, indeed, she had; and she and I talked a great deal, and
very animated she was; and the remainder of that evening
passed without any recurrence of what I called her infatu-
ations. I mean her crazy talk and looks, which embarrassed,
and even frightened me.

But there occurred that night an event which gave my
thoughts quite a new turn, and seemed to startle even
Carmilla's languid nature into momentary energy.

CHAPTER VI

A VERY STRANGE AGONY

When we got into the drawing-room, and had sat down to our coffee and
chocolate, although Carmilla did not take any, she seemed quite herself
again, and Madame, and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, joined us, and made a
little card party, in the course of which papa came in for what he called
his 'dish of tea'.

When the game was over he sat down beside Carmilla on the sofa, and
asked her, a little anxiously, whether she had
heard from her mother since her arrival. She answered 'No'.

He then asked whether she knew where a letter would reach her at present.
'I cannot tell,' she answered ambiguously, 'but I have been thinking
of leaving you; you have been already too hospitable and too kind to me.
I have given you an infinity of trouble, and I should wish to take a
carriage to-morrow, and post in pursuit of her; I know where I shall
ultimately find her, although I dare not yet tell you.'

'But you must not dream of any such thing,' exclaimed my father, to
my great relief. 'We can't afford to lose you so, and I won't consent to
your leaving us, except under the care of your mother, who was so good as
to consent to your remaining with us till she should herself return. I
should be quite happy if I knew that you heard from her; but this evening
the accounts of the progress of the mysterious disease that has invaded
our neighbourhood, grow even more alarming; and my beautiful guest, I do
feel the responsibility, unaided by advice from your mother, very much.
But I shall do my best; and one thing is certain, that you must not think
of leaving us without her distinct direction to that effect. We should
suffer too much in parting lrom you to consent to it easily.'

'Thank you, sir, a thousand times for your hospitality,' she
answered, smiling bashfully. 'You have all been too kind to me; I have
seldom been so happy in all my life before, as in

your beautiful chateau, under your care, and in the society of your dear
daughter.'

So he gallantly, in his old-fashioned way, kissed her hand, smiling
and pleased at her little speech.

I accompanied Carmilla as usual to her room, and sat and chatted with
her while she was preparing for bed.

'Do you think', I said at length, 'that you will ever confide!. fully
in me?'

She turned round smiling, but made no answer, continued to smile on
me.

'You were quite right to ask me that, or anything. You not know how
dear you are to me, or you could not think confidence too great to look
for. But I am under vows, half so awfully, and I dare not tell my story
yet, even to you. The time is very near when you shall know everything.
will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more
ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come
with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me and still come with me, and
hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference
in m~r apathetic nature.'

'Now, Carmilla, you are going to talk your wild again,' I said
hastily.

'Not I, silly little fool as I am, and full of whims and for your sake
I'll talk like a sage. Were you ever at a ball?'

'No; how you do run on. What is it like? How charming must be.'

'I almost forget, it is years ago.' I laughed.

'You are not so old. Your first ball can hardly be yet.'

'I remember everything about it--with an effort. I see it all, as
divers see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense,
rippling, but transparent. There occurred that night what has confused
the picture, and made its colours faint. I was all but assassinated in my
bed, wounded here,' she touched her breast, 'and never was the same
since.'

'Were you near dying?'

'Yes, very--a cruel love--strange love, that would have taken my
life. Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood. Let us
go to sleep now; I feel so lazy. How can I get up .just now and lock my
door?'
She was lying with her tiny hands buried in her rich wavy hair, under
her cheek, her little head upon the pillow, and her glittering eyes
followed me wherever I moved, with a kind of shy smile that I could not
decipher.
I bid her good-night, and crept from the room with an uncomfortable
sensation.

I often wondered whether our pretty guest ever said her prayers. I
certainly had never seen her upon her knees. In the morning she never
came down until long after our family prayers were over, and at night she
never left the drawingroom to attend our brief evening prayers in the
hall.

If it had not been that it had casually come out in one of our
careless talks that she had been baptized, I should have doubted her
being a Christian. Religion was a subject on which I had never heard her
speak a word. If I had known the world better, this particular neglect or
antipathy would not have so much surprised me.

The precautions of nervous people are infectious, and persons of a
like temperament are pretty sure, after a time, to imitate them. I had
adopted Carmilla's habit of locking her bed-room door, having taken into
my head all her whimsical alarms about midnight invaders and prowling
assassins. I had also adopted her precaution of making a brief search
through her room, to satisfy herself that no lurking assassin or robber
was 'ensconced'.

These wise measures taken, I got into my bed and fell alseep. A light
was burning in my room. This was an old habit, of very early date, and
which nothing could have tempted me to dispense with.

Thus fortified I might take my rest in peace. But dreams come through
stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons
make their exits and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths.
I had a dream that night that was the beginning of a very strange agony.

I cannot call it a nightmare, for I was quite conscious of ~being
asleep. But I was equally conscious of being in my room, and lying in
bed, precisely as I actually was. I saw, or fancied I saw, the room and
its furniture just as I had seen it last, except that it was very dark,
and I saw something moving round the foot of the bed, which at first I
could not accurately distinguish. But I soon saw that it was a
sooty-black animal that resembled a monstrous cat. It appeared to me
about four or five feet long, for it measured fully the length of the
hearthrug as it passed over it; and it continued toing and froing with
the lithe sinister restlessness of a beast in a cage. I could not cry
out, although as you may suppose, I was terrified. Its pace was growing
faster, and the room rapidly darker and darker, and at length so dark
that I could no longer see anything of it but its eyes. I felt it spring
lightly on the bed. The two broad eyes approached my face, and suddenly I
felt a stinging pain as if two large needles darted, an inch or two
apart, deep into my breast. I waked with a scream. The room was lighted
by the candle that burnt there all through the night, and I saw a female
figure standing at the foot of the bed, a little at the right side. It
was in a dark loose dress, and its hair was down and covered its
shoulders. A block of stone could not have been more still. There was not
the slightest stir of respiration. As I stared at it, the figure appeared
to have changed its place, and was now nearer the door; then, close to
it, the door opened, and it passed out.

I was now relieved, and able to breathe and move. My first thought
was that Carmilla had been playing me a trick, and that I had forgotten
to secure my door. I hastened to it, and found it locked as usual on the
inside. I was afraid to open it--I was horrified. I sprang into my bed
and covered my head up in the bed-clothes, and lay there more dead than
alive till morning.

CHAPTER VII

DESCENDING

It would be vain my attempting to tell you the horror with which, even
now, I recall the occurrence of that night. It was no such transitory
terror as a dream leaves behind it. It seemed to deepen by time, and
communicated itself to the room and the very furniture that had
encompassed the apparition.

I could not bear next day to be alone for a moment. I should have
told papa, but for two opposite reasons. At one time I thought he would
laugh at my story, and I could not bear its being treated as a jest; and
at another, I thought he might fancy that I had been attacked by the
mysterious complaint which had invaded our neighbourhood. I had myself no
misgivings of the kind, and as he had been rather an invalid for some
time, I was afraid of alarming him.

I was comfortable enough with my good-natured companions, Madame
Perrodon, and the vivacious Mademoiselle La Fontnine. They both perceived
that I was out of spirits and nervous, and at length I told them what lay
so heavy at my heart.

Mademoiselle laughed, but I fancied that Madame Perrodon looked
anxious.

'Martin says that he came up twice, when the old yard-gate was being
repaired, before sunrise, and twice saw the same female figure walking
down the lime-tree avenue.'

'So he well might, as long as there are cows to milk in the river
fields,' said Madame.

'I daresay; but Martin chooses to be frightened, and never did I see
fool more frightened.' 'You must not say a word about it to Carmilla,
because she
can see down that walk from her room window,' I interposed, 'and she is,
if possible, a greater coward than I.'

Carmilla came down rather later than usual that day.

'I was so frightened last night,' she said, so soon as were together,
'and I am sure I should have seen something dreadful if it had not been
for that charm I bought from the poor little hunchback whom I called such
hard names. I had a dream of something black coming round my bed, and I
awoke in a perfect horror, and I really thought, for some seconds, I saw
a dark figure near the chimney-piece, but I felt under my pillow for my
charm, and the moment my fingers touched it, the figure disappeared, and
I felt quite certain, only that I had it by me, that something frightful
would have made its appearance, and, perhaps, throttled me, as it did
those poor people we heard of.'

'Well, listen to me,' I began, and recounted my adventure,' at the
recital of which she appeared horrified.

'And had you the charm near you?' she asked, earnestly. 'No, I had
dropped it into a china vase in the drawingroom, but I shall certainly
take it with me to-night, as you have so much faith in it.'

At this distance of time I cannot tell you, or even understand, how I
overcame my horror so effectually as to lie alone in my room that night.
I remember distinctly that I pinned the charm to my pillow. I fell asleep
almost immediately, and slept even more soundly than usual all night.

Next night I passed as well. My sleep was delightfully deep and
dreamless. But I wakened with a sense of lassitude and melancholy, which,
however, did not exceed a degree that was almost luxurious.

'Well, I told you so,' said Carmilla, when I described my quiet
sleep, 'I had such delightful sleep myself last night; I pinned the charm
to the breast of my night-dress. It was too far away the night before. I
am quite sure it was all fancy, except the dreams. I used to think that
evil spirits made dreams, but our doctor told me it is no such thing.
Only a fever passing by, or some other malady, as they often do, he said,
knocks at the door, and not being able to get in, passes on, with that
alarm.'

'And what do you think the charm is?' said I.

'It has been fumigated or immersed in some drug, and is an
antidote against the malaria,' she answered. 'Then it acts only on the
body?'

'Certainly; you don't suppose that evil spirits are frightened by
bits of ribbon, or the perfumes of a druggist's shop? No, these
complaints, wandering in the air, begin by trying the nerves, and so
infect the brain, but before they can seize upon you, the antidote repels
them. That I am sure is what the charm has done for us. It is nothing
magical, it is simply natural.'

I should have been happier if I could have quite agreed with
Carmilla, but I did my best, and the impression was a little losing its
force.

For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt
the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself
a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy
that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open,
and an idea that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not
unwelcome, possession of me. If it was sad, the tone of mind which this
induced was also sweet. Whatever it might be, my soul acquiesced in it.

I would not admit that I was ill, I would not consent to tell my
papa, or to have the doctor sent for.

Carmilla became more devoted to me than ever, and her strange
paroxysms of languid adoration more frequent. She used to gloat on me
with increasing ardour the more my strength and spirits waned. This
always shocked me like a momentary glare of insanity.

Without knowing it, I was now in a pretty advanced stage of the
strangest illness under which mortal ever suffered. There was an
unaccountable fascination in its earlier symptoms that more than
reconciled me to the incapacitating effect of that stage of the malady.
This fascination increased for a time, until it reached a certain point,
when gradually a sense of the horrible mingled itself with it, deepening,
as you shall hear, until it discoloured and perverted the whole state of
my life.

The first change I experienced was rather agreeable. It was
very near the turning point from which began the descent to Avernus.*

Certain vague and strange sensations visited me in my sleep. The
prevailing one was of that pleasant, peculiar cold thrill which we feel
in bathing, when we move against the current of a river. This was soon
accompanied by dreams that seemed interminable, and were so vague that I
could never recollect their scenery and persons, or any one connected
portion of their action. But they left an awful impression, and a sense
of exhaustion, as if I had passed through a long period of great mental
exertion and danger. After all these dreams there remained on waking a
remembrance of having been in a place very nearly dark, and of having
spoken to people whom I could not see; and especially of one clear voice,
of a female's, very deep, that spoke as if at a distance, slowly, and
producing always the same sensation of indescribable solemnity and fear.
Sometimes there came a sensation as if a hand was drawn softly along my
cheek and neck. Sometimes it was as if warm lips kissed me, and longer
and more lovingly as they reached my throat, but there the caress fixed
itself. My heart beat: faster, my breathing rose and fell rapidly and
full drawn; a sobbing, that rose into a sense of strangulation, and
turned into a dreadful convulsion, in which my senses me and I became
unconscious.

It was now three weeks since the commencement of unaccountable state.
My sufferings had, during the last week, told upon my appearance. I had
grown pale, my eyes were dilated and darkened underneath, and the languor
which I had long felt began to display itself in my countenance.

My father asked me often whether I was ill; but, with an .obstinacy
which now seems to me unaccountable, I persisted. m assuring him that I
was quite well.

In a sense this was true. I had no pain, I could complain of no
bodily derangement. My complaint seemed to be one of the: imagination, or
the nerves, and, horrible as my sufferings were, I kept them, with a
morbid reserve, very nearly to myself.

It could not be that terrible complaint which the peasants called the
oupire, for I had now been suffering for three weeks,
and they were seldom ill for much more than three days, when death put
an end to their miseries.

Carmilla complained of dreams and feverish sensations, but by no
means of so alarming a kind as mine. I say that mine were extremely
alarming. Had I been capable of comprehending my condition, I would have
invoked aid and advice on my knees. The narcotic of an unsuspected
influence was acting upon me, and my perceptions were benumbed.

I am going to tell you now of a dream that led immediately to an odd
discovery.

One night, instead of the voice I was accustomed to hear in the dark,
I heard one, sweet and tender, and at the same time terrible, which said,
'Your mother warns you to beware of the assassin.' At the same time a
light unexpectedly sprang up, and I saw Carmilla, standing, near the foot
of my bed, in her white nightdress, bathed, from her chin to her feet, in
one great stain of blood.

I wakened with a shriek, possessed with the one idea that Carmilla
was being murdered. I remember springing from my bed, and my next
recollection is that of standing in the lobby, crying for help.

Madame and Mademoiselle came scurrying out of their rooms in alarm; a
lamp burned always on the lobby, and seeing me, they soon learned the
cause of my terror.

I insisted on our knocking at Carmilla's door. Our knocking was
unanswered. It soon became a pounding and an uproar. We shrieked her
name, but all was vain.

We all grew frightened, for the door was locked. We hurried back, in
panic, to my room. There we rang the bell long and furiously. If my
father's room had been at that side of the house, we would have called
him up at once to our aid. But, alas! he was quite out of hearing, and to
reach him involved an excursion for which we none of us had courage.

Servants, however, soon came running up the stairs; I had got on my
dressing-gown and slippers meanwhile, and my companions were already
similarly furnished. Recognizing the voices of the servants on the lobby,
we sallied out together; and having renewed, as fruitlessly, our summons
at Carmilla's door, I ordered the men to force the lock. They did so, and we
stood, holding our lights aloft, in the doorway, and so stared into the
room.

We called her by name; but there was still no reply. We looked round
the room. Everything was undisturbed. It was exactly in the state in
which I had left it on bidding her goodnight. But Carmilla was gone.

CHAPTER VIII

SEARCH
At sight of the room, perfectly undisturbed except for our violent
entrance, we began to cool a little, and soon recovered our senses
sufficiently to dismiss the men. It had struck Mademoiselle that possibly
Carmilla had been wakened by the uproar at her door, and in her first
panic had jumped from her bed, and hid herself in a press, or behind a
curtain, irom which she could not, of course, emerge until the majordomo
and his myrmidons* had withdrawn. We now recommenced our search, and
began to call her by name again.

It was all to no purpose. Our perplexity and agitation increased. We
examined the windows, but they were secured. I implored of C:armilla, if
she had concealed herself, to play this cruel t~~ck no longer--to come
out, and to end our anxieties. It was all useless. I was by this time
convinced that she was not in the room, nor in the dressing-room, the
door of which was still locked on this side. She could not have passed
it. I was utterly puzzled. Had Carmilla discovered one of those secret
passages which the old house-keeper said were known to exist in the
schloss, although the tradition of their exact situation had been lost. A
little time would, no doubt, explain all--utterly perplexed as, for the
present, we were.

It was past four o'clock, and I preferred passing the remaining hours
of darkness in Madame's room. Daylight brought no solution of the
difficulty.

The whole household, with my father at its head, was in a state of
agitation next morning. Every part of the chateau was
searched. The grounds were explored. Not a trace of the missing lady
could be discovered. The stream was about to be dragged; my father was in
distraction; what a tale to have to tell the poor girl's mother on her
return. I, too, was almost beside myself, though my grief was quite of a
different kind.

The morning was passed in alarm and excitement. It was now one
o'clock, and still no tidings. I ran up to Carmilla's room, and found her
standing at her dressing-table. I was astounded. I could not believe my
eyes. She beckoned me to her with her pretty finger, in silence. Her face
expressed extreme fear.

I ran to her in an ecstasy of joy; I kissed and embraced her again
and again. I ran to the bell and rang it vehemently, to bring others to
the spot, who might at once relieve my father's anxiety.

'Dear CarmilIa, what has become of you all this time? We have been in
agonies of anxiety about you,' I exclaimed. 'Where have you been? How did
you come back?'

'Last night has been a night of wonders,' she said. 'For mercy's sake,
explain all you can.'

'It was past two last night,' she said, 'when I went to sleep as
usual in my bed, with my doors locked, that of the dressingroom, and that
opening upon the gallery. My sleep was uninterrupted, and, so far as I
know, dreamless; but I awoke just now on the sofa in the dressing-room
there, and I found the door between the rooms open, and the other door
forced. How could all this have happened without my being wakened? It
must have been accompanied with a great deal of noise, and I am
particularly easily wakened; and how could I have been carried out of my
bed without my sleep having been interrupted, I whom the slightest stir
startles?'

By this time, Madame, Mademoiselle, my father, and a number of the
servants were in the room. Carmilla was, of course, overwhelmed with
inquiries, congratulations, and welcomes. She had but one story to tell,
and seemed the least able of all the party to suggest any way of
accounting for what had happened.

My father took a turn up and down the room, thinking. I
saw Carmilla's eye follow him for a moment with a sly, dark glance.

When my father had sent the servants away, Mademoiselle having gone
in search of a little bottle of valerian and salvolatile,* and there
being no one now in the room with Carmilla, except my father, Madame, and
myself, he came to her thoughtfully, took her hand very kindly, led her
to the sofa, and sat down beside her.

'Will you forgive me, my dear, if I risk a conjecture, and ask a
question?'

'Who can have a better'right?' she said. 'Ask what you please, and I
will tell you everything. But my story is simply one of bewilderment and
darkness. I know absolutely nothing. Put any question you please. But you
know, of course, the limitations mamma has placed me under.'

'Perfectly, my dear child. I need not approach the topics on which
she desires our silence. Now, the marvel of last night consists in your
having been removed from your bed and your room, without being wakened,
and this removal having occurred apparently while the windows were still
secured, and the two doors locked upon the inside. I will tell you my
theory, and first ask you a question.'

Carmilla was leaning on her hand dejectedly; Madame and I were
listening breathlessly.

'Now, my question is this. Have you ever been
walking in your sleep?'

'Never, since I was very young indeed.'

'But you did walk in your sleep when you were young?'

'Yes; I know I did. I have been told so often by my
nurse.' My father smiled and nodded.

'Well, what has happened is this. You got up in your sleep, unlocked
the door, not leaving the key, as usual, in the lock, but taking it out
and locking it on the outside; you again took the key out, and carried it
away with you to some one of the five-and-twenty rooms on this floor, or
perhaps up-stairs or down-stairs. There are so many rooms and closets, so
much heavy furniture, and such accumulations of lumber, that it would
require a week to search this old house thoroughly. Do you see, now, what
I mean?'

'I do, but not all,' she answered.

'And how, papa, do you account for her finding herself on the sofa in
the dressing-room, which we had searched so carefully?'

'She came there after you had searched it, still in her sleep, and at
last awoke spontaneously, and was as much surprised to find herself where
she was as any one else. I wish all mysteries were as easily and
innocently explained as yours, Carmilla,' he said, laughing. 'And so we
may congratulate ourselves on the certainty that the most natural
explanation of the occurrence is one that involves no drugging, no
tampering with locks, no burglars, or poisoners, or witches--nothing that
need alarm Carmilla, or any one else, for our safety.'

Carmilla was looking charmingly. Nothing could be more beautiful than
her tints. Her beauty was, I think, enhanced by that graceful languor
that was peculiar to her. I think my father was silently contrasting her
looks with mine, for he said:

'I wish my poor Laura was looking more like herself' and he sighed.

So our alarms were happily ended, and Carmilla restored to her
friends.

CHAPTER IX

THE DOCTOR

As Carmilla would not hear of an attendant sleeping in her room, my
father arranged that a servant should sleep outside her door, so that she
could not attempt to make another such excursion without being arrested
at her own door.

That night passed quietly; and next morning early, the doctor, whom
my father had sent for without telling me a word about it, arrived to see me.
Madame accompanied me to the library; and there the grave little doctor,
with white hair and spectacles, whom I mentioned before, was waiting to
receive me.

I told him my story, and as I proceeded he grew graver and graver.
We were standing, he and I, in the recess of one of the windows,
facing one another. When my statement was over, he leaned with his
shoulders against the wall, and with his eyes fixed on me earnestly, with
an interest in which was a dash of horror.

After a minute's reflection, he asked Madame if he could see my
father.

He was sent for accordingly, and as he entered, smiling, he said:

'I dare say, doctor, you are going to tell me that I am an old fool
for having brought you here; I hope I am.'

But his smile faded into shadow as the doctor, with a very grave
face, beckoned him to him.

He and the doctor talked for some time in the same recess where I had
just conferred with the physician. It seemed an earnest and argumentative
conversation. The room is very large, and I and Madame stood together,
burning with curiosity, at the further end. Not a word could we hear,
however, for they spoke in a very low tone, and the deep recess of the
window quite concealed the doctor from view, and very nearly my father,
whose foot, arm, and shoulder only could we see; and the voices were, I
suppose, all the less audible for the sort of closet which the thick wall
and window formed.

After a time my father's face looked into the room; it was pale,
thoughtful, and, I fancied, agitated.

Accordingly I approached, for the first time a little alarmed; for,
although I felt very weak, I did not feel ill; and strength, one always
fancies, is a thing that may be picked up when we please.

My father held out his hand to me, as I drew near, but he was looking
at the doctor, and he said: 'It certainly/s very odd; I don't understand
it quite. Laura, come here, dear; now attend to Doctor Spielsberg, and
recollect yourself.'

'You mentioned a sensation like that of two needles piercing the skin,
somewhere about your neck, on the night when you experienced your first
horrible dream. Is there still any soreness?'

'None at all,' I answered.

'Can you indicate with your finger about the point at which you think
this occurred?'

'Very little below my throat--here,' I answered.

I wore a morning dress, which covered the place I pointed
to.

'Now you can satisfy yourself,' said the doctor. 'You won't mind your
papa's lowering your dress a very little. It is necessary, to detect a
symptom of the complaint under which you have been suffering.'

I acquiesced. It was only an inch or two below the edge of my collar.

'God bless me!--so it is,' exclaimed my father, growing pale.

'You see it now with your own eyes,' said the doctor, with a gloomy
triumph.

'What is it?' I exclaimed, beginning to be frightened. 'Nothing, my dear
young lady, but a small blue spot, about the size of the tip of your
little finger; and now,' he continued, turning to papa, 'the question is,
what is best to be done?' 'Is there any danger?' I urged, in great
trepidation.

'I trust not, my dear,' answered the doctor. 'I don't see why you
should not recover. I don't see why you should not begin immediately to
get better. That is the point at which the sense of strangulation
begins?' 'Yes,' I answered. 'And--recollect as well as you can--the same
point was a kind of centre of that thrill which you described just now,
like the current of a cold stream running against you?' 'It may have
been; I think it was.'

'Ay, you see?' he added, turning to my father. 'Shall I say a word to
Madame?'

'Certainly,' said my father.

He called Madame to him, and said:

'I find my young friend here far from well. It won't be of any great
consequence, I hope; but it will be necessary that some steps be taken,
which I will explain by-and-by; but in the meantime, Madame, you will be
so good as not to let Miss Laura be alone for one moment. That is the
only direction I need give for the present. It is indispensable.'

'And you, dear Laura, I know you will observe the doctor's direction.'
'I shall have to ask your opinion upon another patient, whose
symptoms slightly resemble those of my daughter, that have just been
detailed to you--very much milder in degree, but I believe quite of the
same sort. She is a young lady--our guest; but as you say you will be
passing this way again this evening, you can't do better than take your
supper here, and. you can then see her. She does not come down till the
afternoon.'

'I thank you,' said the doctor. 'I shall be with you, then, at about
seven this evening.'

And then they repeated their directions to me and to Madame, and with
this parting charge my father left us, and walked out with the doctor;
and I saw them pacing together up and down between the road and the moat,
on the grassy platform in front of the castle, evidently absorbed in
earnest conversation.

The doctor did not return. I saw him mount his horse there, take his
leave, and ride away eastward through the forest.

Nearly at the same time I saw the man arrive from Dranfeld* with the
letters, and dismount and hand the bag to my father.

In the meantime, Madame and I were both busy, lost in conjecture as
to the reasons of the singular and earnest direction which the doctor and
my father had concurred in imposing. Madame, as she afterwards told me,
was afraid the doctor apprehended a sudden seizure, and that, without
prompt assistance, I might either lose my life in a fit, or at least be
seriously hurt.

This interpretation did not strike me; and I fancied, perhaps luckily
for my nerves, that the arrangement was prescribed simply to secure a
companion, who would prevent my taking too much exercise, or eating
unripe fruit, or doing any of the fifty foolish things to which young
people are supposed to be prone.

About half-an-hour after my father came in--he had a letter in his
hand--and said:

'This letter has been delayed; it is from General Spielsdorf. He
might have been here yesterday, he may not come till tomorrow, or he may
be here to-day.'

He put the open letter into my hand; but he did not look pleased, as
he used when a guest, especially one so much loved as the General, was
coming. On the contrary, he looked as if he wished him at the bottom of
the Red Sea. There was plainly something on his mind which he did not
choose to divulge.

'Papa, darling, will you tell me this?' said I, suddenly laying my
hand on his arm, and looking, I am sure, imploringly in his face.

'No, dear; he thinks, if right steps are taken, you will be quite
well again, at least, on the high road to a complete recovery, in a day
or two,' he answered, a little drily. 'I wish our good friend, the
General, had chosen any other time; that is, I wish you had been
perfectly well to receive him.'

'But do tell me, papa,' I insisted, 'what does he think is the matter
with me?'

'Nothing; you must not plague me with questions,' he answered, with
more irritation than I ever remember him to have displayed before; and
seeing that I looked wounded, I suppose, he kissed me, and added, 'You
shall know all about it in a day or two; that is, all that I know. In the
meantime you are not to trouble your head about it.'

He turned and left the room, but came back before I had done
wondering and puzzling over the oddity of all this; it was merely to say
that he was going to Karnstein, and had ordered the carriage to be ready
at twelve, and that I and Madame should accompany him; he was going to
see the priest who lived near those picturesque grounds, upon business,
and as Carmilla had never seen them, she could follow, when she came
down, with Mademoiselle, who would bring materials for what you call a
pic-nic, which might be laid for us in the ruined castle.

At twelve o'clock, accordingly, I was ready, and not long after, my
father, Madame and I set out upon our projected drive.

Passing the drawbridge we turn to the right, and follow the road over
the steep Gothic bridge, westward, to reach the deserted village and
ruined castle of Karnstein.

No sylvan drive can be fancied prettier. The ground breaks into
gentle hills and hollows, all clothed with beautiful woods, totally
destitute of the comparative formality which artificial planting and
early culture and pruning impart.

The irregularities of the ground often lead the road out of its
course, and cause it to wind beautifully round the sides of broken
hollows and the steeper sides of the hills, among varieties of ground
almost inexhaustible.

Turning one of these points, we suddenly encountered our old friend,
the General, riding towards us, attended by a mounted servant. His
portmanteaus were following in a hired waggon, such as we term a cart.

The General dismounted as we pulled up, and, after the usual
greetings, was easily persuaded to accept the vacant seat in the
carriage, and send his horse on with his servant to the schloss.

CHAPTER X

BEREAVED

It was about ten months since we had last seen him; but that time had
sufficed to make an alteration of years in his appearance. He had grown
thinner; something of gloom and anxiety had taken the place of that
cordial serenity which used to characterize his features. His dark blue
eyes, always penetrating, now gleamed with a sterner light from under his
shaggy grey eyebrows. It was not such a change as grief alone usually
induces, and angrier passions seemed to have had their share in bringing
it about.

We had not long resumed our drive, when the General began to talk,
with his usual soldierly directness, of the bereavement, as he termed it,
which he had sustained in the death of his beloved niece and ward; and he
then broke out in a tone of intense bitterness and fury, inveighing
against the 'hellish arts' to which she had fallen a victim, and
expressing, with more exasperation than piety, his wonder that Heaven
should tolerate so monstrous an indulgence of the lusts and malignity of
hell.

My father, who saw at once that something very extraordinary had
befallen, asked him, if not too painful to him, to detail the
circumstances which he thought justified the strong terms in which he
expressed himself.

'I should tell you all with pleasure,' said the General, 'but you
would not believe me.'

'Why should I not?' he asked.

'Because', he answered testily, 'you believe in nothing but what
consists with your own prejudices and illusions. I remember when I was
like you, but I have learned better.'

'Try me,' said my father; 'I am not such a dogmatist as you suppose.
Besides which, I very well know that you generally require proof for what
you believe, and am, therefore, very strongly pre-disposed to respect
your conclusions.'

'You are right in supposing that I have not been led lightly into a
belief in the marvellous--for what I have experienced is marvellous--and
I have been forced by extraordinary evidence to credit that which ran
counter, diametrically, to all my theories. I have been made the dupe of
a preternatural conspiracy.'

Notwithstanding his professions of confidence in the General's
penetration, I saw my father, at this point, glance at the General, with,
as I thought, a marked suspicion of his sanity.

The General did not see it, luckily. He was looking gloomily and
curiously into the glades and vistas of the woods that were opening
before us.

'You are going to the ruins of Karnstein?' he said. 'Yes, it is a
lucky coincidence; do you know I was going to ask you to bring me there
to inspect them. I have a special object in exploring. There is a ruined
chapel, ain't there, with a great many tombs of that extinct family?'

'So there are--highly interesting,' said my father. 'I hope you are
thinking of claiming the title and estates?'

My father said this gaily, but the General did not recollect the
laugh, or even the smile, which courtesy exacts for a friend's joke; on
the contrary, he looked grave and even fierce, ruminating on a matter
that stirred his anger and horror.

'Something very different,' he said, gruffly. 'I mean to unearth some
of those fine people. I hope, by God's blessing, to accomplish a pious
sacrilege here, which will relieve our earth of certain monsters, and
enable honest people to sleep in their beds without being assailed by
murderers. I have strange things to tell you, my dear friend, such as I
myself would have scouted as incredible a few months since.'

My father looked at him again, but this time not with a glance of
suspicion--with an eye, rather, of keen intelligence and alarm.

'The house of Karnstein', he said, 'has been long extinct a hundred
years at least. My dear wife was maternally descended from the
Karnsteins. But the name and title have long ceased to exist. The castle
is a ruin; the very village is deserted; it is fifty years since the
smoke of a chimney was seen there; not a roof left.'

'Quite true. I have heard a great deal about that since I last saw you;
a great deal that will astonish you. But I had better relate everything
in the order in which it occurred,' said the General. 'You saw my dear
ward--my child, I may call her. No creature could have been more
beautiful, and only three months ago none more blooming.'

'Yes, poor thing! when I saw her last she certainly was quite
lovely,' said my father. 'I was grieved and shocked more than I can tell
you, my dear friend; I knew what a blow it was to you.'

He took the General's hand, and they exchanged a kind pressure. Tears
gathered in the old soldier's eyes. He did not seek to conceal them. He
said:

'We have been very old friends; I knew you would feel for me,
childless as I am. She had become an object of very near interest to me,
and repaid my care by an affection that cheered my home and made my life
happy. That is all gone. The years that remain to me on earth may not be
very long; but by God's mercy I hope to accomplish a service to mankind
before I die, and to subserve the vengeance of Heaven upon the fiends who
have murdered my poor child in the spring of her hopes and beauty!'

'You said, just now, that you intended relating everything as it
occurred,' said my father. 'Pray do; I assure you that it is not mere
curiosity that prompts me.'

By this time we had reached the point at which the Drunstall* road,
by which the General had come, diverges from the road which we were
travelling to Karnstein.

'How far is it to the ruins?' inquired the General, looking anxiously
forward.

'About half a league,' answered my father. 'Pray let us hear the
story you were so good as to promise.'

CHAPTER XI

THE STORY

'With all my heart,' said the General, with an effort; and after a short
pause in which to arrange his subject, he commenced one of the strangest
narratives I ever heard.

'My dear child was looking forward with great pleasure to the visit
you had been so good as to arrange for her to your charming daughter.'
Here he made me a gallant but melancholy bow. 'In the meantime we had an
invitation to my old friend the Count Carlsfeld, whose schloss is about
six leagues to the other side of Karnstein. It was to attend the series
of ftes which, you remember, were given by him in honour of his
illustrious visitor, the Grand Duke Charles.'*

'Yes; and very splendid, I believe, they were,' said my father.

'Princely! But then his hospitalities are quite regal. He has
Aladdin's lamp.* The night from which my sorrow dates was devoted to a
magnificent masquerade. The grounds were thrown open, the trees hung with
coloured lamps. There was such a display of fireworks as Paris itself had
never witnessed. And such music--music, you know, is my weakness--such
ravishing music! The finest instrumental band, perhaps, in the world, and
the finest singers who could be collected from all the great operas in
Europe. As you wandered through these fantastically illuminated grounds,
the moon-lighted chateau throwing a rosy light from its long rows of
windows, you would suddenly hear these ravishing voices stealing from the
silence of some grove, or rising from boats upon the lake. I felt myself,
as I looked and listened, carried back into the romance and poetry of my
early youth.

'When the fireworks were ended, and the ball beginning, we returned
to the noble suite of rooms that were thrown open to the dancers. A
masked ball, you know, is a beautiful sight; but so brilliant a spectacle
of the kind I never saw before.

'It was a very aristocratic assembly. I was myself almost the only
"nobody" present.

'My dear child was looking quite beautiful. She wore no mask. Her
excitement and delight added an unspeakable charm to her features, always
lovely. I remarked a young lady, dressed magnificently, but wearing a
mask, who appeared to me to be observing my ward with extraordinary
interest. I had seen her, earlier in the evening, in the great hall, and
again, for a few minutes, walking near us, on the terrace under the
castle windows, similarly employed. A lady, also masked, richly and
gravely dressed, and with a stately air, like a person of rank,
accompanied her as a chaperon. Had the young lady not worn a mask, I
could, of course, have been much more certain upon the question whether
she was really watching my poor darling. I am now well assured that she
was.

'We were now in one of the salons. My poor dear child had been
dancing, and was resting a little in one of the chairs near the door; I
was standing near. The two ladies I have mentioned had approached, and
the younger took the chair next my ward; while her companion stood beside
me, and for a little time addressed herself, in a low tone, to her charge.

'Availing herself of the privilege of her mask, she turned to me, and
in the tone of an old friend, and calling me by my name, opened a
conversation with me, which piqued my curiosity a good deal. She referred
to many scenes where she had met me--at Court, and at distinguished
houses. She alluded to little incidents which I had long ceased to think
of, but which, I found, had only lain in abeyance in my memory, for they
instantly started into life at her touch.

'I became more and more curious to ascertain who she was, every
moment. She parried my attempts to discover very adroitly and pleasantly.
The knowledge she showed of many passages in my life seemed to me all but
unaccountable; and she appeared to take a not unnatural pleasure in
foiling my curiosity, and in seeing me flounder, in my eager perplexity,
from one conjecture to another.

'In the meantime the young lady, whom her mother called by the odd
name of Millarca, when she once or twice addressed her, had, with the
same ease and grace, got into conversation with my ward.

'She introduced herself by saying that her mother was a
very old acquaintance of mine. She spoke of the agreeable audacity which
a mask rendered practicable; she talked like a friend; she admired her
dress, and insinuated very prettily her admiration of her beauty. She
amused her with laughing criticisms upon the people who crowded the
ballroom, and laughed at my poor child's fun. She was very witty and
lively when she pleased, and after a time they had grown very good
friends, and the young stranger lowered her mask, displaying a remarkably
beautiful face. I had never seen it before, neither had my dear child.
But though it was new to us, the features were so engaging, as well as
lovely, that it was impossible not to feel the attraction powerfully. My
poor girl did so. I never saw anyone more taken with another at first
sight, unless,. indeed, it was the stranger herself, who seemed quite to
have lost her heart to her.

'In the meantime, availing myself of the licence of a masquerade, I
put not a few questions to the eider lady.

"'You have puzzled me utterly," I said, laughing. "Is that not
enough? Won't you, now, consent to stand on equal term, and do me the
kindness to remove your mask?"

"'Can any request be more unreasonable?" she replied.' "Ask a lady to
yield an advantage! Beside, how do you know should recognize me? Years
make changes."

"'As you see," I said, with a bow, and, I suppose, melancholy little
laugh.
"'As philosophers tell us," she said; "and how do you that a sight of
my face would help you?"

"'I should take chance for that," I answered. "It is trying to make
yourself out an old woman; your figure
you."

"'Years, nevertheless, have passed since I saw you, since you saw me,
for that is what I am considering. there, is my daughter; I cannot then
be young, even in opinion of people whom time has taught to be indulgent,
I may not like to be compared with what you remember You have no mask to
remove. You can offer me nothing exchange."

"'My petition is to your pity, to remove it."

"'And mine to yours, to let it stay where it is," she replied.

"'Well, then, at least you will tell me whether you are French or
German; you speak both languages so perfectly."

"'I don't think I shall tell you that, General; you intend a
surprise, and are meditating the particular point of attack."

"'At all events, you won't deny this," I said, "that being honoured
by your permission to converse, I ought to know how to address you. Shall
I say Madame la Comtesse?"

'She laughed, and she would, no doubt, have met me with another
evasion--if, indeed, I can treat any occurrence in an interview every
circumstance of which was pre-arranged, as I now believe, with the
profoundest cunning, as liable to be modified by accident.

"'As to that," she began; but she was interrupted, almost as she
opened her lips, by a gentleman, dressed in black, who looked
particularly elegant and distinguished, with this drawback, that his face
was the most deadly pale I ever saw, except in death. He was in no
masquerade--in the plain evening dress of a gentleman; and he said,
without a smile, but with a courtly and unusually low bow:

"'Will Madame la Comtesse permit me to say a very few words which may
interest her?"

'The lady turned quickly to him, and touched her lip in token of
silence; she then said to me, "Keep my place for me, General; I shall
return when I have said a few words."

'And with this injunction, playfully given, she walked a little aside
with the gentleman in black, and talked for some minutes, apparently very
earnestly. They then walked away slowly together in the crowd, and I lost
them for some minutes.

'I spent the interval in cudgelling my brains for a conjecture as to
the identity of the lady who seemed to remember me so kindly, and I was
thinking of turning about and joining in the conversation between my
pretty ward and the Countess's daughter, and trying whether, by the time
she returned, I might not have a surprise in store for her, by having her
name, title, chateau, and estates at my fingers' ends. But at this moment
she returned, accompanied by the pale man in black, who said:

"'I shall return and inform Madame la Comtesse when her carriage is
at the door."
'He withdrew with a bow.'

CHAPTER XII

A PETITION

' "Then we are to lose Madame la Comtesse, but I hope only for a few
hours," I said, with a low bow.

"'It may be that only, or it may be a few weeks. It was very unlucky
his speaking to me just now as he did. Do you now
know me?"

'I assured her I did not.

"'You shall know me," she said, "but not at present. We are older and
better friends than, perhaps, you suspect. I cannot yet declare myself. I
shall in three weeks pass your beautiful schloss, about which I have been
making enquiries. I shall then look in upon you for an hour or two, and
renew a friendship which 1 never think of without a thousand pleasant
recollections- This moment a piece of news has reached me like a
thunderbolt. I must set out now, and travel by a devious route, nearly a
hundred miles, with all the dispatch I can possibly make. My perplexities
multiply. I am only deterred by the compulsory reserve I practise as to
my name from: making a very singular request of you. My poor child has
not quite recovered her strength. Her horse fell with her, at a hunt
which she had ridden out to witness, her nerves have not yet recovered
the shock, and our physician says that she must no account exert herself
for some time to come. We came here, in consequence, by very easy
stages--hardly six leagues a day. I must now travel day and night, on a
mission of life and death--a mission the critical and momentous nature of
which I shall be able to explain to you when we meet, as 1 hope we shall,
in a few weeks, without the necessity of any concealment."

'She went on to make her petition, and it was in the tone of a
person from whom such a request amounted to conferring, rather than
seeking a favour. This was only in manner, and, as it seemed, quite
unconsciously. Than the terms in which it was expressed, nothing could be
more deprecatory. It was
simply that I would consent to take charge of her daughter during her
absence.

'This was, all things considered, a strange, not to say, an audacious
request. She in some sort disarmed me, by stating and admitting
everything that could be urged against it, and throwing herself entirely
upon my chivalry. At the same moment, by a fatality that seems to have
predetermined all that happened, my poor child came to my side, and, in
an undertone, besought me to invite her new friend, Millarca, to pay us a
visit. She had just been sounding her, and thought, if her mamma would
allow her, she would like it extremely.

'At another time I should have told her to wait a little, until, at
least, we knew who they were. But I had not a moment to think in. The two
ladies assailed me together, and I must confess the refined and beautiful
face of the young lady, about which there was something extremely
engaging, as well as the elegance and fire of high birth, determined me;
and, quite overpowered, I submitted, and undertook, too easily, the care
of the young lady, whom her mother called Millarca.

'The Countess beckoned to her daughter, who listened with grave
attention while she told her, in general terms, how suddenly and
peremptorily she had been summoned, and also of the arrangement she had
made for her under my care, adding that I was one of her earliest and
most valued friends.

'I made, of course, such speeches as the case seemed to call for, and
found myself, on reflection, in a position which I did not half like.

'The gentleman in black returned, and very ceremoniously conducted
the lady from the room.

'The demeanour of this gentleman was such as to impress me with the
conviction that the Countess was a lady of very much more importance than
her modest title alone might have led me to assume.

'Her last charge to me was that no attempt was to be made to learn
more about her than I might have already guessed, until her return. Our
distinguished host, whose guest she was, knew her reasons.

"'But here", she said, "neither I nor my daughter could safely
remain for more than a day. I removed my mask
imprudently for a moment, about an hour ago, and, too late, I fancied you
saw me. So I resolved to seek an opportunity of talking a little to you.
Had I found that you had seen me, I should have thrown myself on your
high sense of honour to keep my secret for some weeks. As it is, I am
satisfied that you. did not see me; but if you now suspect, or, on
reflection, should suspect, who I am, I commit myself, in like manner,
entirely to your honour. My daughter will observe the same secresy, and I
well know that you will, from time to time, remind her, lest she should
thoughtlessly disclose it."

'She whispered a few words to her daughter, kissed her hurriedly
twice, and went away, accompanied by the pale gentleman in black, and
disappeared in the crowd.

"'In the next room", said Millarca, "there is a window that looks
upon the hall door. I should like to see the last of mamma, and to kiss
my hand to her."

'We assented, of course, and accompanied her to the window. We looked
out, and saw a handsome old-fashioned carriage, with a troop of couriers
and footmen. We saw the slim figure of the pale gentleman in black, as he
held a thick velvet cloak, and placed it about her shoulders and threw
the hood over her head. She nodded to him, and just touched his hand with
hers. He bowed low repeatedly as the door closed,' and the carriage began
to move.

"'She is gone," said Millarca, with a sigh.

"'She is gone," I repeated to myself, for the first time--in the
hurried moments that had elapsed since my consent-- reflecting upon the
folly of my act.

"'She did not look up," said the young lady, plaintively. "'The Countess
had taken off her mask, perhaps, and did not care to show her face," I
said; "and she could not knows that you were in the window."

'She sighed, and looked in my face. She was so beautiful that I
relented. I was sorry I had for a moment repented of my hospitality, and
I determined to make her amends for the unavowed churlishness of my
reception.

'The young lady, replacing her mask, joined my ward in persuading me
to return to the grounds, where the concert was soon to be renewed. We
did so, and walked up and down the
terrace that lies under the castle windows. Millarca became very intimate
with us, and amused us with lively descriptions and stories of most of
the great people whom we saw upon the terrace. I liked her more and more
every minute. Her gossip, without being ill-natured, was extremely
diverting to me, who had been so long out of the great world. I thought
what life she would give to our sometimes lonely evenings at home.

'This ball was not over until the morning sun had almost reached the
horizon. It pleased the Grand Duke to dance till then, so loyal people
could not go away, or think of bed.

'We had just got through a crowded salon, when my ward asked me 'what
had become of Millarca. I thought she had been by her side, and she
fancied she was by mine. The fact was, we had lost her.

'All my efforts to find her were vain. I feared that she had
mistaken, in the confusion of a momentary separation from us, other
people for her new friends, and had, possibly, pursued and lost them in
the extensive grounds which were thrown open to us.

'Now, in its full force, I recognized a new folly in my having
undertaken the charge of a young lady without so much as knowing her
name; and lettered as I was by promises, of the reasons for imposing
which I knew nothing, I could not even point my inquiries by saying that
the missing young lady was the daughter of the Countess who had taken her
departure a few hours before.

'Morning broke. It was clear daylight before I gave up my search. It
was not till near two o'clock next day that we heard anything of my
missing charge.
'At about that time a servant knocked at my niece's door, to say that
he had been earnestly requested by a young lady, who appeared to be in
great distress, to make out where she could find the General Baron
Spieldsdorf and the young lady his daughter, in whose charge she had been
left by her mother.

'There could be no doubt, notwithstanding the slight inaccuracy, that
our young friend had turned up; and so she had. Would to heaven we had
lost her!

'She told my poor child a story to account for her having failed to
recover us for so long. Very late, she said, she had got
to the housekeeper's bedroom in despair of finding us, and had then
fallen into a deep sleep which, long as it was, had hardly sufficed to
recruit her strength after the fatigues of the ball.

'That day Millarea came home with us. I was only too happy, after
all, to have secured so charming a companion for my dear girl.

CHAPTER XIII

THE WOOD-MAN

'There soon, however, appeared some drawbacks. In the first place,
Millarea complained of extreme languor--the weakness that remained after
her late illness--and she never emerged from her room till the afternoon
was pretty far advanced. In the next place, it was accidentally
discovered, although she always locked her door on the inside, and never
disturbed the key from its place till she admitted the maid to assist at
her toilet, that she was undoubtedly sometimes absent from her room in
the very early morning, and at various times later in the day, before she
wished it to be understood that she was stirring. She was repeatedly seen
from the windows of the schloss, in the first faint grey of the morning,
walking through the trees, in an easterly direction, and looking like a
person in a trance. This convinced me that she walked in her sleep. But
this hypothesis did not solve the puzzle. How did she pass out from her
room, leaving the door locked on the inside? How did she escape from the
house without unbarring door or window?
'In the midst of my perplexities, an anxiety of a far more urgent
kind presented itself.

'My dear child began to lose her looks and health, and that in a
manner so mysterious, and even horrible, that I became thoroughly
frightened.

'She was at first visited by appalling dreams; then, as she fancied,
by a spectre, sometimes resembling Millarca, sometimes in the shape of a
beast, indistinctly seen, walking round the foot of her bed, from side to
side. Lastly came sensations.

One, not unpleasant, but very peculiar, she said, resembled the flow of
an icy stream against her breast. At a later time, she felt something
like a pair of large needles pierce her, a little below the throat, with
a very sharp pain. A few nights after, followed a gradual and convulsive
sense of strangulation; then came unconsciousness.'

I could hear distinctly every word the kind old General was saying,
because by this time we were driving upon the short grass that spreads on
either side of the road as you approach the roofless village which had
not shown the smoke of a chimney for more than half a century.

You may guess how strangely I felt as I heard my own symptoms so
exactly described in those which had been experienced by the poor girl
who, but for the catastrophe which followed, would have been at that
moment a visitor at my father's chateau. You may suppose, also, how I
felt as I heard him detail habits and mysterious peculiarities which
were, in fact, those of our beautiful guest, Carmilla!

A vista opened in the forest; we were on a sudden under the chimneys
and gables of the ruined village, and the towers and battlements of the
dismantled castle, round which gigantic trees are grouped, overhung us
from a slight eminence.

In a frightened dream I got down from the carriage, and in silence,
for we had each abundant matter for thinking; we soon mounted the ascent,
and were among the spacious chambers, winding stairs, and dark corridors
of the castle.

'And this was once the palatial residence of the Karnsteins'' said
the old General at length, as from a great window he looked out across
the village, and saw the wide, undulating expanse of forest. 'It was a
bad family, and here its bloodstained annals were written,' he continued.
'It is hard that they should, after death, continue to plague the human
race with their atrocious lusts. That is the chapel of the Karnsteins,
down there.'

He pointed down to the grey walls of the Gothic building, partly
visible through the foliage, a little way down the steep. 'And I hear the
axe of a woodman,' he added, 'busy among the trees that surround it; he
possibly may give us the information of which I am in search, and point
out the grave
of Mircalla, Countess of Karnstein. These rustics preserve the local
traditions of great families, whose stories die out among the rich and
titled so soon as the families themselves become extinct.'

'We have a portrait, at home, of Mircalla, the Countess Karnstein;
should you like to see it?' asked my father.

'Time enough, dear friend,' replied the General. 'I believe that I
have seen the original; and one motive which has led me to you earlier
than I at first intended, was to explore the chapel which we are now
approaching.'

'What! see the Countess Mircalla,' exclaimed my father; 'why, she has
been dead more than a century!'

'Not so dead as you fancy, I am told,' answered the General. 'I confess,
General, you puzzle me utterly,' replied my father, looking at him, I
fancied, for a moment with a return of the suspicion I detected before.
But although there was anger and detestation, at times, in the old
General's manner, there was nothing flighty.

'There remains to me', he said, as we passed under the heavy arch of
the Gothic church--for its dimensions would have justified its being so
styled--'but one object which can interest me during the few years that
remain to me on earth, and that is to wreak on her the vengeance which, I
thank God, may still be accomplished by a mortal arm.'

'What vengeance can you mean?' asked my father, increasing amazement.

'I mean, to decapitate the monster,' he answered, with a fierce
flush, and a stamp that echoed mournfully through the hollow ruin, and
his clenched hand was at the same moment raised, as if it grasped the
handle of an axe, while he shook it ferociously in the air.

'What?' exclaimed my father, more than ever bewildered. 'To strike her
head off.' 'Cut her head off!'

'Aye, with a hatchet, with a spade, or with anything can cleave
through her murderous throat. You shall hear,' answered, trembling with
rage. And hurrying forward he said:

'That beam will answer for a seat; your dear child is
fatigued; let her be seated, and I will, in a few sentences, close my
dreadful story.'

The squared block of wood, which lay on the grass-grown pavement of
the chapel, formed a bench on which I was very glad to seat myself, and
in the meantime the General called to the woodman, who had been removing
some boughs which leaned upon the old walls; and, axe in hand, the hardy
old fellow stood before us.

He could not tell us anything of these monuments; but there was an
old man, he said, a ranger of this forest, at present sojourning in the
house of the priest, about two miles away, who could point out every
monument of the old Karnstein family; and, for a trifle, he undertook to
bring him back with him, if we would lend him one of our horses, in
little more than half-an-hour.

'Have you been long employed about this forest?' asked my father of
the old man.

'I have been a woodman here,' he answered in his patois, 'under the
forester, all my days; so has my father before me, and so on, as many
generations as I can count up. I could show you the very house in the
village here, in which my ancestors lived.'

'How came the village to be deserted?' asked the General. 'It was
troubled by revenants, sir; several were tracked to their graves, there
detected by the usual tests, and extinguished in the usual way, by
decapitation, by the stake, and by burning;* but not until many of the
villagers were killed.

'But after all these proceedings according to law,' he continued--'so
many graves opened, and so many vampires deprived of their horrible
animation--the village was not relieved. But a Moravian nobleman,* who
happened to be travelling this way, heard how matters were, and being
skilled--as many people are in his country--in such affairs, he offered
to deliver the village from its tormentor. He did so thus: There being a
bright moon that night, he ascended, shortly after sunset, the tower of
the chapel here, from whence he could distinctly see the churchyard
beneath him; you can see it from that window. From this point he watched
until he saw the vampire come out of his grave, and place near it the
linen clothes in which he had been folded, and then glide away towards
the village to plague its inhabitants.

'The stranger, having seen all this, came down from the steeple, took
the linen wrappings of the vampire, and carried them up to the top of the
tower, which he again mounted. When the vampire returned from his
prowlings and missed his clothes, he cried furiously to the Moravian,
whom he saw at the summit of the tower, and who, in reply, beckoned him
to ascend and take them. Whereupon the vampire, accepting his invitation,
began to climb the steeple, and so soon as he had reached the
battlements, the Moravian, with a stroke of his sword, clove his skull in
twain, hurling him down to the church-yard, whither, descending by the
winding stairs, the stranger followed and cut his head off, and next day
delivered it and the body to the villagers, who duly impaled and burnt
them.*

'This Moravian nobleman had authority from the then head of the
family to remove the tomb of Mircalla, Countess Karnstein, which he did
effectually, so that in a little while its site was quite forgotten.'

'Can you point out where it stood?' asked the General, eagerly.

The forester shook his head and smiled.

'Not a soul living could tell you that now,' he said; 'besides, they
say her body was removed; but no one is sure of that either.'

Having thus spoken, as time pressed, he dropped his axe and departed,
leaving us to hear the remainder of the General's strange story.

CHAPTER XIV

THE MEETING

'My beloved child,' he resumed, 'was now growing rapidly worse. The
physician who attended her had failed to produce the slightest impression
upon her disease, for such I then
supposed it to be. He saw my alarm, and suggested a consultation. I
called in an abler physician, from Gratz. Several days elapsed before he
arrived. He was a good and pious, as well as a learned man. Having seen
my poor ward together, they withdrew to my library to confer and discuss.
I, from the adjoining room, where I awaited their summons, heard these
two gentlemen's voices raised in something sharper than a strictly
philosophical discussion. I knocked at the door and entered. I found the
old physician from Gratz maintaining his theory. His rival was combating
it with undisguised ridicule, accompanied with bursts of laughter. This
unseemly manifestation subsided and the altercation ended on my entrance.

"'Sir," said my first physician, "my learned brother seems to think
that you want a conjuror, and not a doctor."

"'Pardon me," said the old physician from Gratz, looking displeased,
"I shall state my own view of the case in my own way another time. I
grieve, Monsieur le General, that by my skill and science I can be of no
use. Before I go I shall do myself the honour to suggest something to
you."

'He seemed thoughtful, and sat down at a table and began to write.
Profoundly disappointed, I made my bow, and as I turned to go, the other
doctor pointed over his shoulder to his companion who was writing, and
then, with a shrug, significantly touched his forehead.

'This consultation, then, left me precisely where I was. I walked out
into the grounds, all but distracted. The doctor from Gratz, in ten or
fifteen minutes, overtook me. He apologized for having followed me, but
said that he could not conscientiously take his leave without a few words
more. He told me that he could not be mistaken; no natural disease
exhibited the same symptoms; and that death was already very near. There
remained, however, a day, or possibly two, of life. If the fatal seizure
were at once arrested, with great care and skill her strength might
possibly return. But all hung now upon the confines of the irrevocable.
One more assault might extinguish the last spark of vitality which is,
every moment, ready to die.

"'And what is the nature of the seizure you speak of?." I entreated.

"'I have stated all fully in this note, which I place in your hands
upon the distinct condition that you send for the nearest clergyman, and
open my letter in his presence, and on no account read it till he is with
you; you would despise it else, and it is a matter of life and death.
Should the priest fail you, then, indeed, you may read it."

'He asked me, before taking his leave finally, whether I would wish
to see a man curiously learned upon the very subject, which, after I had
read his letter, would probably interest me above all others, and he
urged me earnestly to invite him to visit him there; and so took his
leave.

'The ecclesiastic was absent, and I read the letter by myself. At
another time, or in another case, it might have excited my ridicule. But
into what quackeries will not people rush for a last chance, where all
accustomed means have failed, and the life of a beloved object is at
stake?

'Nothing, you will say, could be more absurd than the learned man's
letter. It was monstrous enough to have consigned him to a madhouse. He
said that the patient was suffering from the visits of a vampire! The
punctures which she described as having occurred near the throat, were,
he insisted, the insertion of those two long, thin, and sharp teeth
which, it is well known, are peculiar to vampires; and there could be no
doubt, he added, as to the well-defined presence of the small livid mark
which all concurred in describing as that induced by the demon's lips,
and every symptom described by the sufferer was in exact conformity with
those recorded in every case of a similar visitation.

'Being myself wholly sceptical as to the existence of any such
portent as the vampire, the supernatural of the good doctor
furnished, in my opinion, but another learning and intelligence oddly
associated with some one hallucination. I was so miserable, however,
that, rather try nothing, I acted upon the instructions of the letter.

'I concealed myself in the dark dressing-room, that upon the poor
patient's room, in which a candle was burning, and watched there till she
was fast asleep. I stood at the door,
peeping through the small crevice, my sword laid on the table beside me,
as my directions prescribed, until, a little after one, I saw a large
black object, very ill-defined, crawl, as it seemed to me, over the foot
of the bed, and swiftly spread itself up to the poor girl's throat, where
it swelled, in a moment, into a great, palpitating mass.

'For a few moments I had stood petrified. I now sprang forward, with
my sword in my hand. The black creature suddenly contracted toward the
foot of the bed, glided over it, and, standing on the floor about a yard
below the foot of the bed, with a glare of skulking ferocity and horror
fixed on me, I saw Millarca. Speculating I know not what, I struck at her
instantly with my sword; but I saw her standing near the door, unscathed.
Horrified, I pursued, and struck again. She was gone; and my sword flew
to shivers against the door.

'I can't describe to you all that passed on that horrible night. The
whole house was up and stirring. The spectre Millarca was gone. But her
victim was sinking fast, and before the morning dawned, she died.'

The old General was agitated. We did not speak to him. My father
walked to some little distance, and began reading the inscriptions on the
tombstones; and thus occupied, he strolled into the door of a side-chapel
to prosecute his researches. The General leaned against the wall, dried
his eyes, and sighed heavily. I was relieved on hearing the voices of
Carmilla and Madame, who were at that moment approaching. The voices died
away.

In this solitude, having just listened to so strange a story,
connected, as it was, with the great and titled dead, whose monuments
were mouldering among the dust and ivy round us, and every incident of
which bore so awfully upon my own mysterious case--in this haunted spot,
darkened by the towering foliage that rose on every side, dense and high
above its noiseless walls--a horror began to steal over me, and my heart
sank as I thought that my friends were, after all, not about to enter and
disturb this triste and ominous scene.

The old General's eyes were fixed on the ground, as he leaned with
his hand upon the basement* of a shattered monument.

Under a narrow, arched doorway, surmounted by one of those demoniacal
grotesques in which the cynical and ghastly fancy of old Gothic carving
delights, I saw very gladly the beautiful face and figure of Carmilla
enter the shadowy chapel.

I was just about to rise and speak, and nodded smiling, in answer to
her peculiarly engaging smile; when with a cry, the old man by my side
caught up the woodman's hatchet, and started forward. On seeing him a
brutalized change came over her features. It was an instantaneous and
horrible transformation, as she made a crouching step backwards. Before I
could utter a scream, he struck at her with all his force, but she dived
under his blow, and unscathed, caught him in her tiny grasp by the wrist.
He struggled for a moment to release his arm, but his hand opened, the
axe fell to the ground, and the girl was gone.

He staggered against the wall. His grey hair stood upon his head, and
a moisture shone over his face, as if he were at the point of death.

The frightful scene had passed in a moment. The first thing I
recollect after, is Madame standing before me, and impatiently repeating
again and again, the question, 'Where is Mademoiselle Carmilla?'

I answered at length, 'I don't know--I can't tell--she went there,'
and I pointed to the door through which Madame had just entered; 'only a
minute or two since.'

'But I have been standing there, in the passage, ever since
Mademoiselle Carmilla entered; and she did not return.'

She then began to call 'Carmilla', through every door and passage and
from the windows, but no answer came.

'Aye,' he said; 'that is Millarca. That is the same who long ago was
called Mircalla, Countess Karnstein. Depart from this accursed ground, my
poor child, as quickly as you can. Drive to the clergyman's house, and
stay there till we come. Begone! May you never behold Carmilla more; you
will not find her here.'

CHAPTER XV

ORDEAL AND EXECUTION

As he spoke one of the strangest-looking men I ever beheld, entered the
chapel at the door through which (]Carmilla had made her entrance and her
exit. He was tall, narrow-chested, stooping, with high shoulders, and
dressed in black. His face was brown and dried in with deep furrows; he
wore an oddly shaped hat with a broad leaf.* His hair, long and grizzled,
hung on his shoulders. He wore a pair of gold spectacles, and walked
slowly, with an odd shambling gait, with his face sometimes turned up to
the sky, and sometimes bowed down toward the ground, and seemed to wear a
perpetual smile; his long thin arms were swinging, and his lank hands, in
old black gloves ever so much too wide for them, waving and gesticulating
in utter abstraction.

'The very man? exclaimed the General, advancing with manifest
delight. 'My dear Baron, how happy I am to see you, I had no hope of
meeting you so soon.' He signed to my father, who had by this time
returned, leading the fantastic old gentleman, whom he called the Baron,
to meet him. He introduced him formally, and they at once entered into
earnest conversation. The stranger took a roll of paper from his pocket,
and spread it on the worn surface of a tomb that stood by. He had a
pencil case in his fingers, with which he traced imaginary lines from
point to point on the paper, which from their often glancing from it,
together, at certain points of the building, I concluded to be a plan of
the chapel. He accompanied, what I may term, his lecture, with occasional
readings from a dirty little book, whose yellow leaves were closely
written over.

They sauntered together down the side aisle, opposite to the spot
where I was standing, conversing as they went; then they began measuring
distances by paces, and finally they all stood together, facing a piece
of the side-wall, which they began to examine with great minuteness;
pulling off the ivy that clung over it, and rapping the plaster with the
ends of their sticks, scraping here, and knocking there. At length they
ascertained
the existence of a broad marble tablet, with letters carved in relief
upon it.

With the assistance of the woodman, who soon returned, a monumental
inscription, and carved escutcheon,* were disclosed. They proved to be
those of the long lost monument of Mircalla, Countess Karnstein.

The old General, though not I fear given to the praying mood, raised
his hands and eyes to heaven, in mute thanksgiving for some moments.

'To-morrow', I heard him say; 'the commissioner will be here, and the
Inquisition will be held according to law.'*

Then turning to the old man with the gold spectacles, whom I have
described, he shook him warmly by both hands and said:

'Baron, how can I thank you? How can we all thank you? You will have
delivered this region from a plague that has scourged its inhabitants for
more than a century. The horrible enemy, thank God, is at last tracked.'

My father led the stranger aside, and the General followed. I knew
that he had led them out of hearing, that he might relate my case, and I
saw them glance often quickly at me, and the discussion proceeded.

My father came to me, kissed me again and again, and leading me from
the chapel, said:

'It is time to return, but before we go home, we must add to our
party the good priest, who lives but a little way from this; and persuade
him to accompany us to the schloss.'

In this quest we were successful: and I was glad, being unspeakably
fatigued when we reached home. But my satisfaction was changed to dismay,
on discovering that there were no tidings of Carmilla. Of the scene that
had occurred in the ruined chapel, no explanation was offered to me, and
it was clear that it was a secret which my father for the present
determined to keep from me.

The sinister absence of Carmilla made the remembrance of the scene
more horrible to me. The arrangements for that night were singular. Two
servants, and Madame were to sit up in my room that night; and the
ecclesiastic with my father kept watch in the adjoining dressing-room.

The priest had performed certain solemn rites that night, the purport
of which I did not understand any more than I comprehended the reason of
this extraordinary precaution taken for my safety during sleep.

I saw all clearly a few days later.

The disappearance of Carmilla was followed by the discontinuance of
my nightly sufferings.

You have heard, no doubt, of the appalling superstition that prevails
in Upper and Lower Styria, in Moravia, Silesia, in Turkish Servia,* in
Poland, even in Russia; the superstition, so we must call it, of the
Vampire.

If human testimony, taken with every care and solemnity, judicially,
before commissions innumerable, each consisting of many members, all
chosen for integrity and intelligence, and constituting reports more
voluminous perhaps than exist upon any one other class of cases, is worth
anything, it is difficult to deny, or even to doubt the existence of such
a phenomenon as the Vampire.*
For my part I have heard no theory by which to explain what I myself
have witnessed and experienced, other than that supplied by the ancient
and well-attested belief of the country.

The next day the formal proceedings took place in the Chapel of
Karnstein. The grave of the Countess Mircalla was opened; and the General
and my father recognized each his perfidious and beautiful guest, in the
face now disclosed to view. The features, though a hundred and fifty
years had passed since her funeral, were tinted with the warmth of life.
Her eyes were open; no cadaverous smell exhaled from the coffin. The two
medical men, one officially present, the other on the part of the
promoter of the inquiry, attested the marvellous fact, that there was a
faint but appreciable respiration, and a corresponding action of the
heart. The limbs were perfectly flexible, the flesh elastic; and the
leaden coffin floated with blood, in which to a depth of seven inches,
the body lay immersed. Here then, were all the admitted signs and proofs
of vampirism. The body, therefore, in accordance with the ancient
practice, was raised, and a sharp stake driven through the heart of the
vampire, who uttered a piercing shriek at the moment, in all respects
such as might escape from a
living person in the last agony. Then the head was struck off, and a
torrent of blood flowed from the severed neck. The body and head were
next placed on a pile of wood, and reduced to ashes, which were thrown
upon the river and borne away, and that territory has never since been
plagued by the visits of a vampire.

My father has a copy of the report of the Imperial Commission, with
the signatures of all who were present at these proceedings, attached in
verification of the statement. It is from this official paper that I have
summarized my account of this last shocking scene.*

CHAPTER XVI

CONCLUSION

I write all this you suppose with composure. But far from it; I cannot
think of it without agitation. Nothing but your earnest desire so
repeatedly expressed, could have induced me to sit down to a task that
has unstrung my nerves for months to come, and reinduced a shadow of the
unspeakable horror which years after my deliverance continued to make my
days and nights dreadful, and solitude insupportably terrific.

Let me add a word or two about that quaint Vordenburg, to whose
curious lore we were indebted for discovery of the Countess Mircalla's
grave.

He had taken up his abode in Gratz, where, living upon mere pittance,
which was all that remained to him of princely estates of his family, in
Upper Styria, he himself to the minute and laborious investigation of the
marvellously authenticated tradition of Vampirism. He had his fingers'
ends all the great and little works upon the 'Magia Posthuma', 'Phlegon
de Mirabilibus', 'Augustinus cura pro Mortuis', 'Philosophicae et
Christianae Co de Vampiris', by John Christofer Harenberg;* and a others,
among which I remember only a few of those which he lent to my father. He
had a voluminous digest of all the judicial
cases, from which he had extracted a system of principles that appear to
govern--some always, and others occasionally only--the condition of the
vampire. I may mention, in passing, that the deadly pallor attributed to
that sort of revenants, is a mere melodramatic fiction. They present, in
the grave, and when they show themselves in human society, the appearance
of healthy life. When disclosed to light in their coffins, they exhibit
all the symptoms that are enumerated as those which proved the
vampire-life of the long-dead Countess Karnstein.

How they escape from their graves and return to them for certain
hours every day, without displacing the day or leaving any trace of
disturbance in the state of the coffin or the cerements, has always been
admitted to be utterly inexplicable.* The amphibious existence of the
vampire is sustained by daily renewed slumber in the grave. Its horrible
lust for living blood supplies the vigour of its waking existence. The
vampire is prone to be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence,
resembling the passion of love, by particular persons. In pursuit of
these it will exercise inexhaustible patience and stratagem, for access
to a particular object may be obstructed in a hundred ways. It will never
desist until it has satiated its passion, and drained the very life of
its coveted victim. But it will, in these cases, husband and protract its
murderous enjoyment with the refinement of an epicure, and heighten it by
the gradual approaches of an artful courtship. In these cases it seems to
yearn for something like sympathy and consent. In ordinary ones it goes
direct to its object, overpowers with violence, and strangles and
exhausts often at a single feast.

The vampire is, apparently, subject, in certain situations, to
special conditions. In the particular instance of which I have given you
a relation, Mircalla seemed to be limited to a name which, if not her
real one, should at least reproduce, without the omission or addition of
a single letter, those, as we say, anagrammatically, which compose it.
Carmilla did this; so did Millarca.

My father related to the Baron Vordenburg, who remained with us for
two or three weeks after the expulsion of Carmilla, the story about the
Moravian nobleman and the vampire at
Karnstein churchyard, and then he asked the Baron how he had discovered
the exact position of the long-concealed tomb of the Countess Millarca?
The Baron's grotesque features puckered up into a mysterious smile; he
looked down, still smiling, on his worn spectacle-case and fumbled with
it. Then looking up, he said:

'I have many journals, and other papers, written by that remarkable
man; the most curious among them is one treating of the visit of which
you speak, to Karnstein. The tradition, of course, discolours and
distorts a little. He might have been termed a Moravian nobleman, for he
had changed his abode to that territory, and was, beside, a noble. But he
was, in truth, a native of Upper Styria. It is enough to say that in very
early youth he had been a passionate and favoured lover of the beautiful
Mircalla, Countess Karnsteia. Her early death plunged him into
inconsolable grief. It is the nature of vampires to increase and
multiply, but according to an ascertained and ghostly law.

'Assume, at starting, a territory perfectly free from that pest. How
does it begin, and how does it multiply itself? I will tell
you. A person, more or less wicked, puts an end to himself. A suicide,
under certain circumstances, becomes a vampire. That spectre visits
living people in their slumbers; they die, and almost invariably, in the
grave, develop into vampires. This happened in the case of the beautiful
Mircalla, who was haunted by one of those demons. My ancestor,
Vordenburg, whose title I still bear, soon discovered this, and in the
course of the studies to which he devoted himself, learned a great deal
more.

'Among other things, he concluded that suspicion of vampirism would
probably fall, sooner or later, upon the dead Countess, who in life had
been his idol. He conceived a horror, be she what she might, of her
remains being profaned by the outrage of a posthumous execution. He has
left a curious paper to prove that the vampire, on its expulsion from its
amphibious existence, is projected into a far more horrible life; and he
resolved to save his once beloved Mircalla from this.

'He adopted the stratagem of a journey here, a pretended removal of
her remains, and a real obliteration of her monument-
When age had stolen upon him, and from the vale of years he looked back
on the scenes he was leaving, he considered, in a different spirit, what
he had done, and a horror took possession of him. He made the tracings
and notes which have guided me to the very spot, and drew up a confession
of the deception that he had practised. If he had intended any further
action in this matter, death prevented him; and the hand of a remote
descendant has, too late for many, directed the pursuit to the lair of
the beast.'

We talked a little more, and among other things he said was this:

'One sign of the vampire is the power of the hand. The slender hand
of Mircalla closed like a vice of steel on the General's wrist when he
raised the hatchet to strike. But its power is not confined to its grasp;
it leaves a numbness in the limb it seizes, which is slowly, if ever,
recovered from.'

The following Spring my father took me a tour through Italy. We
remained away for more than a year. It was long before the terror of
recent events subsided; and to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to
memory with ambiguous ~ alternations--sometimes the playful, languid,
beautiful girl; ~ sometimes the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined
church; and often from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the
light step of Carmilla at the drawing-room door.

NOTES

243 arcana... dual existence ... intermediates: arcana are secrets; our
dual existence is, as in Swedenborg's teachings, in the spiritual and
material worlds. Swedenborg describes 'The world of spirits' as 'a place
intermediate between heaven and hell, and ... also the intermediate state
of man after death'. It is a kind of posthumous purgatory or testing
place, where humanity is purged and the individual inclines toward heaven
or hell. Hesseflus seems to posit a similar state between life and death
where the 'undead' exist; Carmilla can apparently materialize and
dematerialize.

252 'In truth ... came by it': Merchant of Venice . i. 1-3. The speech
begins 'In sooth', and line 3 is 'But how I caught it, found it, or
came by it', but the speaker here is quoting from memory. In the play,
Antonio is speaking, and goes on: 'What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is
born, I am to learn.'

255 Matska: a feminine diminutive, suggesting a Czech or Polishservant.

258 Cleopatra ... asp to her bosom: Cleopatra committed suicide by
provoking the bite of a poisonous snake. A picture of the same event
hangs in a gloomy antechamber in Le Fanu's The Rose and the Key (1871:
ch. 87).

296 Grand Duke Charles: presumably the reigning monarch of a small
German state.

296 Aladdin's lamp: a magic lamp in the Arabian Nights. Rubbing it
summons a genie who will fulfil any wish.

307 usual tests ... burning: the tests involved examining buried corpses
for evidence that they had moved after burial, that hair and nails
continued to grow, or that corruption had not begun. Suspected vampires
were 'extinguished' when the head was cut off, a stake driven through the
heart, the corpse burned, and the ashes scattered. See Paul Barber,
Vampires, Burial, and Death:
Folklore and Reality (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988).

307 a Moravian nobleman: Moravia, then an Austrian province, is now part of
Czechoslovakia.

308 impaled and burnt them: Le Fanu adapted the forester's story from
an account in Traite' sur les Apparitions des Esprits, et sur los
Vampires, ou les Revenans de Hongrie, de Mornvie, etc. (A Treatise on the
Apparitions of Spirits, and on the Vampires or Revenants of Hungary,
Moravia, etc.), by Dom Augustin Calmet (Paris, 1751 ); Le Fanu probably
read Calmet as translated into English by Henry Christmas: The Phantom
World: or, the Philosophy of Spirits, Apparitions, etc., 2 vols. (London:
Richard Bentley, 1850). Calmet attributes the story to 'a sensible
priest' who accompanied Canon Jeanin of the cathedral at Olmutz (Olomouc)
to the Moravian village of Liebava 'to take information concerning the
fact of a certain famous vampire, which had caused much confusion in this
village ... some years before'. The priests examine witnesses, who
testify that the vampire 'had often disturbed the living in their beds at
night, that he had come out of the cemetery, and had appeared in several
houses three or four years ago; that his troublesome visits had ceased
because a Hungarian stranger, passing through the village at the time of
these reports, had boasted that he could put an end to them, and make the
vampire disappear. To perform his promise, he mounted on the church
steeple, and observed the moment when the vampire came out of his grave,
leaving near it the linen clothes in which he had been enveloped, and
then went to disturb the inhabitants of the village.

The Hungarian, having seen him come out of his grave, went down
quickly from the steeple, took up the linen envelops of the vampire, and
carried them with him up the tower. The vampire having returned from his
prowlings, cried loudly against the Hungarian, who made him a sign from
the top of the tower that if he wished to have his clothes again he must
fetch them; the vampire began to ascend the steeple, but the Hungarian
threw him down backwards from the ladder, and cut his head off with a
spade. Such was the end of this tragedy' (Phantom World, ii. 209-10).

315 Silesia ... Servia: Silesia is an area north-east of Bohemia and
Moravia, or of modern Czechoslovakia. Servia (Serbia) was
then under Turkish rule.

315 If human testimony ... Vampire: Calmet emphasizes the number
of reports from commissions, doctors, lawyers, and public
officials, especially in early eighteenth-century Hungary,
describing cases of vampirism.

316 shocking scene: Le Fanu's details are drawn from Calmer, espe-
cially from chapter 46, which describes the exhumation and
destruction of a vampire named Peter Plogojovitz. See also
Barber, pp. 5-9.

316 'Magia Posthum ... Harenberg: Magia Posthuma [Sorcery after
Death] by Charles Ferdinand de Schertz (Olmutz, 1706); De
Mirabilibas [Concerning Marvels], a Latin version of the Greek
Peri thuunutsion by Phlegon ofTralles, a freedman of the Emperor
Hadrian; St Augustine, De cura pro Mortuis [On caring for the
dead], a treatise on respect for the dead, which also warns
against excessive mourning; Philosophicae et Christianat Cogitationes
de Vampiris [Philosophical and Christian Reflections on Vam-
pires] by John Christian [not Christofer] Harenberg (Wolfen-
buttel, 1739). Calmer refers to all of these works.

317 inexplicable: Calmet, who is learned and intelligent, is sceptical
about most of the wonders he narrates, but notes the testimony
of reliable witnesses and is willing to extend a provisional belief.
He admits his bafflement at the vampire's mobility, and also his
doubts, finally conceding that the devil may be at work.